There's a guy I'm familiar with that runs video stores. He has about 10 of them scattered about two states. I went to one of them the other day with him and he was very proud as he showed me his lan. It's some sort of ptp network o/s like Lantastic only it isn't Lantastic. The company that made it went out of business about 10 years ago. The app he uses in all his stores is a DOS app and he runs exclusively DOS machines. Occasionally, one of his prehistoric boxes crashes and he builds another one. I'm almost certain that he "format /s"'s a floppy and re-installs on the new box. IIRC, MS licensed that stuff to 1 CPU (or am I wrong?). For the sake of argument, let's say what he's doing is illegal. I am unaware of any place you can still purchase MS-DOS 5.0 (although I haven't looked in quite some time). Still, is this guy "breaking the license agreement"? And if he is, and assuming MS-DOS 5.0 can no longer be purchased, what options does he have? FreeDOS? What if the app he uses to run his business "requires" MS-DOS?
The pat answer is "upgrade". But, as he says, "why should I? This stuff works. I've been using it for 10 years." I can't give him a reason to upgrade, but it strikes me as unjust to force him into a position where he has no option but to violate a license agreement or to pay for something he doesn't really need. I cannot think of any other industry being allowed to pull this.
Just a few wandering thoughts,
Mikem