[time-nuts] Maintaining boatanchors

David I. Emery die at dieconsulting.com
Sun Oct 24 03:21:33 UTC 2010


On Sat, Oct 23, 2010 at 02:44:51PM -0700, J. Forster wrote:
> Very true, except it's more like 5-10 years.

	These days John is absolutely right... likely none of the
developers, none of the equipment, perhaps not even the corporate
shell of the division or department that designed the product and 
wrote the software survives.   Probably the source code was thrown
out with the old servers that were sold for scrap... or just carted off
to be shredded with all the other paper and electronic records...

	Horror stories abound about organizations that need to make some
minor patch or change to source code of a popular product for some
important customer even just a few years after its release and nobody
can find the right source code or the right build environment
(compilers, libraries, OS etc and the hardware they ran on) or if they
can be found it takes many many hours of expensive time and talent to
reconstruct the right stuff to actually make a code image that matches
what is shipping.


-- 
  Dave Emery N1PRE/AE, die at dieconsulting.com  DIE Consulting, Weston, Mass 02493
"An empty zombie mind with a forlorn barely readable weatherbeaten
'For Rent' sign still vainly flapping outside on the weed encrusted pole - in 
celebration of what could have been, but wasn't and is not to be now either."




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