Message-ID: <69f3e010@news.ausics.net> From: not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) Subject: Re: AI Is Killing Some Legacy Hardware Support Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc References: <10sbn6f$2kkkk$8@dont-email.me> <69f13be9@news.ausics.net> <69f28e2d@news.ausics.net> <10svmfn$8kj$1@reader1.panix.com> User-Agent: tin/2.6.5-20251224 ("Glenury") (Linux/2.4.31 (i586)) NNTP-Posting-Host: news.ausics.net Date: 1 May 2026 09:04:48 +1000 Organization: Ausics - https://newsgroups.ausics.net Lines: 33 X-Complaints: abuse@ausics.net Path: csiph.com!news.bbs.nz!news.ausics.net!not-for-mail Xref: csiph.com comp.os.linux.misc:86047 Dan Cross wrote: > So, to answer the question, "is it free for me?" the answer is > no, it is not. But it never has been. Yes, presumably you > installed whatever distribution you are using gratis, and yes, > it has worked for you for some time. But that's largely > coincidence: if you had some obscure hardware device that had > never been supported at all, you would be in largely the same > situation. The reality is that it only ever "worked" because > someone ate the cost of doing the work to make it work, and > offered the result of that work up for no charge; but the cost > was still paid in terms of someone's time and effort, with no > guarantee of continued effort indefinitely into the future. Sure, I agree, and if BSD might still do that I should look at them. That's all I've been proposing to do. > What we are seeing now is that no one is stepping up to bear > that continued cost, and so the effort has ceased; again, no > one is "forcing" you to do anything. A way to look at it is > you can't force developers to continue to support something on > their own dime that you're not willing to pay for yourself, > either monetarily or with your own time and effort. > > It's really no more complex than that, I'm afraid. Yes nobody's forcing me to use Linux, hence I'm not arguing with the Linux developers about what they should spend their time on, but looking at what the BSD developers are spending their time on, in case it now fits my needs better. -- __ __ #_ < |\| |< _#