On Thu, Aug 30, 2007 at 12:06:53PM +0300, Nadav Har'El wrote: > Who can gurantee you that in 5 years (or 10, or 50) years, Microsoft Word > doesn't becomes as unpopular and rare as Qtext is today? 20 years ago, > Qtext was so popular noone could ever believe that it could go away. > But it did. And it did because only one company supported it, and only one > codebase existed that read it, and this codebase died with its company.
However, you are looking it it through Israeli eyes. Microsoft Word is a worldwide product and there are millions of users. When Qtext or Einstein where at their peak, computers where so heavily taxed that only the rich, or companies could afford them. While it's unlikley that Microsoft will go away overnight, or even over 20 years, it's not impossible. For example look at DELAG or PAN AM, both the top airline of their times, both gone, and most people have never even heard of DELAG. Or AT&T? The brand remains the same, but the AT&T of 2007 is nothing like the AT&T that was expected in 2001 as portrayed by a movie of that title made in 1968. As for open standards, how many of them that existed in 1968 (there were lots of them) still are in use? While someone coined the term "FOSS" relatively recently, we called it "public domain software" and it existed in the 1950's and possibly before that. I was writing and using public domain software long before most of the people on this list were born. Speaking of open standards, in 1970 until the 1990's IBM was the world's largest publishing house and ALL of their documents were written in Script. How many of you have Script interpeters, could at any time code in it, or have even heard of it? The various ROFF's are a derivitave of Script, but not compatible. BTW, except for a handfull of ex-pat Israelis and a shaliach or two, in 1991, no one had heard of Q-Text outside of Israel. The only well known Hebrew word processor known outside of Israel was Nisus, which ran on a Macintosh and was developed in California. Of course the Original MacWrite could handle Hebrew, if you had a Hebrew system, but how many people had Macintosh computers before 1991 when the prices dropped? > > Ironically, the situation of MS-Word in this respect then Qtext is better > because of free software! How is Q-Text free? There is a difference between abandonware and free. It may very well be that one of the owners of Q-Text retained the copyright and if you try to sell it you will hear from his lawyer. > A lot of free software can read (and write) MS-Word > after years of reverse-engineering efforts. But still, only one company - > Microsoft - has any real interest that this format lives on. This could be a > problem in the future, even if you don't see it now. I see it as a small problem. What I see is a program that has been a commercial success for 15-20 years around the world, and business have a vested interest in keep their old documents readable. If Microsoft were to fall into a hole in the earth and disapear, there would be hundreds of little companies trying to produce a program that read their documents. I also see FOSS programs evolving, for example, I have Open Office documents that can not be read by Open Office. For example, Open Office has been abandoned on several older platforms and version 1 won't read properly ODT2 version documents. Right now Open Office version 2 can read Open Office version 1 documents but what about Open Office version 7, or 10? or if there is one a year, 30? Sure someone could take the well published format for version 1 documents and write a program to convert them to version 30, but what if you are the only person with a document, and you can't program. As a hobby, I specialize in collecting old programs for the Mac, but I don't have any Israeli ones. I also have a few old versions of PC software, but I don't have any of the Hebrew ones (e.g. Enistein, Q-Text, Dagesh, WordPerfect Hebrew) or dongles for them if I did. > "Open Standards" is a sexy, politically-correct slogan, as well as being a > very good idea. But still, I believe that "Free Software" is much more > important (even if less politically-correct and communist-sounding). I agree too, but there needs to be a trade off. Some things need the the money a commerical company generates to make them happen and keep them going. For example, Open Office only exists because SUN hoped to compete with Microsoft Office and need to fill a hole in the software offerings for their hardware. Eventually they realized usurping Windows and M/S Office was not going to happen, so they open sourced their program. Without SUN'S support, Open office would not have gone far anyway. They still contribute heavily to it. The first Open Office Hebrew support was funded by IBM beacuse they had the same idea. The second was funded by the Chief Scientist's office (your tax shequels at work). So while it costs nothing to download and use Hebrew Open Office, Sun and IBM stockholders and Israelis taxpayers paid for it. > Take a look at troff, for example. It is, believe it or not, 34 years old - See above. Geoff. -- Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel [EMAIL PROTECTED] N3OWJ/4X1GM IL Voice: (07)-7424-1667 U.S. Voice: 1-215-821-1838 Visit my 'blog at http://geoffstechno.livejournal.com/ ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
