On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 11:40 AM, Michael Watterson wrot= e: > > I'm not against FOSS or Version control packages. > > But it's patent nonsense to claim that BECAUSE something is a FOSS > project it's automatically immune from getting "lost". > You keep changing the point, and telling everyone they're missing the point= .. The ORIGINAL argument was that RCS can cause your files to be locked up in some old format that nobody can read anymore. People said: "not with F/OSS RCS because it's always going to be available" NOW the infamous "point" you think people are trying to prove is that because ANY package is F/OSS means that it's immune from being lost. That's not what we were talking about. If you want to sidestep "the point", at least say so. Commonly used F/OSS RCS is going to be locatable 25 years from now. This isn't some obscure package that you (for whatever reason) think is hosted on Geocities or an ISP in Tripoli. There are literally millions of hard copies of every major RCS available. Unless the world blows up in a fireball, you will be able to locate a copy of it 25 years from now and read your repository. You are making the following assumptions: 1. You were too stupid to make your own copy of the RCS 2. You didn't make archives of your files independent of the RCS 3. You actually need to see 25 year old code 4. You couldn't possibly figure out how to reverse engineer poorly documented formats, should they happen to be. 5. You can't rewrite software that can implement the openly documented repository formats (as they are). 6. You haven't cared about that code for 25 years; you haven't UPDATED the RCS in 25 years 7. You're still alive in 25 years. That's a lot of assumptions for this 1 in a billion case that is quite pointless to argue any further. --=20 Martin K. --=20 http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist .