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You know resorting to ad hominem is poor form, right?

The law is not a code of ethics. Sometimes, at some points in history, it has been quite unethical. These days it's not so bad in the US, but copyright does overreach quite a bit, and there are certainly things one could do that would violate copyright but not be unethical. Think abandonware. Someone following the ACM's code of ethics couldn't participate in VetusWare. They certainly violate copyright. Personally, I'm surprised they've been allowed to survive. It makes me have a slightly more positive opinion of Microsoft and others that VetusWare has survived.

I don't personally upload things to VetusWare, and I'm not terribly interested in the stuff there. But, I don't think it would be professionally unethical to do that. If I was uploading my employer's code, sure, that's a professional ethics issue, but, if I dig out an ancient copy of some abandonware I have lying around and upload it on my own time, from a connection that doesn't trace back to my employer's office network, I don't think that's a professional ethics issue. By the way, do you think everyone who's ever downloaded anything from VetusWare should go to prison or be kicked out of the software field?

Back to the ACM's ethics code. You're arguing it's not that bad. And you're right. It's not that bad. It's not bad because it's vague and unenforceable. But putting out a code with "Respect patents and copyrights, always" in it, when software patents rain down terror on true innovators daily and the only way to preserve any semblance of the history of personal computing is to just ignore copyright altogether, tells me that the leaders of the ACM disagree with me on something important. I wouldn't want those people running a licensing body. And despite your protestations, they are the ones who probably would be running the licensing body, because they are the ones running the professional organization right now.

So, there's substantial evidence you're wrong that I'd like everything this hypothetical licensing body does. I think a lot of software engineers wouldn't like it, which is probably part of why we don't have one. We don't agree on everything, thegarbz. Some of us are libertarians. Some of us are socialists. We would have political fights like any other diverse group of people with differing views.

Right now, the ACM isn't so bad. They mainly put on conferences and stuff like that. Nobody cares about their code of ethics. Nobody has to follow it. Even if you're in the ACM you probably don't have to follow it because there's probably extremely little, if any, enforcement of it. But the fact that someone got that language into the ethics code means there is a substantial pressure group in the ACM that would like to see everyone in the ACM forced to endorse the status quo on copyright and patents in relation to software. I'd rather not give those people any power. I don't think I'd have much to gain from that, and I think I would have much to lose. And, from a non-selfish point of view, I think the software field has much to lose, too, and not just because of the copyright/patent thing. I think it's a good thing that you can hire yourself out as a contractor while you're in high school or start Facebook from your dorm room in college. You regulate the field, you destroy that. Freedom is worth a lot.

Finally, I agree with my sibling poster about small organizations and politics. Look at Debian if you doubt our organizations have politics.

You know, when he actually explains how to do this.

Getting the Win3.1 and Photoshop installers is trivial.

Installing Win3.1 is a snap.

The Photoshop installer runs fine.

...but PS needs a 256-color display. THIS Tutorial will get you a working 256-color display, but now when I try to run Photoshop, it immediately crashes. LIke, all of Dosbox, not just Windows.

So really looking forward to reading about the tweaks he came up with to get this shit ACTUALLY WORKING.

You know, when he actually explains how to do this.

Getting the Win3.1 and Photoshop installers is trivial.

Installing Win3.1 is a snap.

The Photoshop installer runs fine.

...but PS needs a 256-color display. THIS Tutorial will get you a working 256-color display, but now when I try to run Photoshop, it immediately crashes. LIke, all of Dosbox, not just Windows.

So really looking forward to reading about the tweaks he came up with to get this shit ACTUALLY WORKING.

Hi!

What an awesome find! You can actually download all the software you'd ever want for the system here - http://www.vetusware.com/ - which is a website with hundreds of abandoned software titles for download free. They do have various versions of MS-DOS, which I'd suggest MS-DOS 5.0 or higher because I still have nightmares of edlin *cringe*. They do have MS-DOS 6.22 for download along with GWBasic, QBasic, Borland C++ for DOS, etc for development. I assume since you said the system is from 1984 that's it's an 8086 or 8088 which rules out Windows 3.x.

After years of using TRS-80 systems I moved to an 8088 XT clone in 1990 running MS-DOS 3.3, and as you that's where I really started learning to code with GWBasic. About 6 years ago I had some stuff in my closet shift one evening and that old system fell from the top shelf to the floor never to boot again. I wish I still had it, but a few years ago I did pull out an old 486SX system I picked up used in college (around 1996) and played with some of these old DOS languages and games.

Have fun though... so many people cast away these old systems as boat anchors, but they're awesome to work with if you have some patience.

As Linus said: "Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it".

Which is a way of saying that you can find just about anything on the Internet. (From a moral, if perhaps not technically legal, point of view, you have the "bitrotted" originals and these are "backups".)

Seems more like a "case in point" for me. The software you mention is extremely specialized (ranch management) and, as you say yourself, you haven't tried to run it in WINE for at least 8 years. I fully understand that you can't/don't want to write ranch management software yourself, but the hope is that, if there's enough demand for the product amongst non-Windows users, someone else will do the work (perhaps the company that releases the software). Then users like you could contribute in other ways, with feedback, bug reports, maybe documentation.

I don't understand how this has anything to do with the hobby/tool comparison you make, since the computer I'm working on is also a tool, one that works much better than Windows as far as my productivity is concerned (some of the apps I use everyday don't have any equivalents on Windows, that I'm aware of). I'm sorry that one application is keeping you from a potential switch to a free and better OS, but let's not berate computers running GNU/Linux OS's as hobby machines.

Something to keep in mind - You may find yourself not being able to run that ranch management software, except in a really old OS, in a decade anyway; you're basically relying upon a small group of developers to update the software for each new Microsoft OS. If Lion Edge packed up shop, that ranch management software might end up here.

Free software offers more "protection", if you will, for apps that you rely upon than proprietary software because it's always possible for someone to take the code and update it if a project goes under. And it's usually not difficult to find developers willing to do so.

btw, in looking at the Lion Edge website, it seems their software is also available for OSX.

of course!

grab an abandoned copy at http://vetusware.com/
and don't forget to grab also some abandoned office programs and games.

you'll probably be capable to do the same things as in vista, much faster.