Microsoft 3D Movie Maker Released As Open-Source

[sinepgib]

People: “Open source your projects, esp. if they are abandonware!!!”
Also people (after the fact): “It's worthless to open source abandonware, what a shitty contribution!!!”

People suck. Period.

TBF it's most likely not the same subset of people. Besides, I don't think it's about open sourcing abandonware they complain, but because they already hate MS and everything counts to confirm the bias.
DISCLAIMER: I hate MS as much as I find it reasonable to hate a company. But I can see when something they do aligns with my interests despite that.

[oiaohm]

In a perfect world abandonware would always become open source based on right to repair laws. Never gonna happen, but one can dream.
For a start it would require proactive archival in some government agency to avoid cases of "lost floppies", good luck getting companies to get on board with that :'(

The reality is a lot of software used by governments around the world have the source code archived. Yes MS Windows and MS office and many other Microsoft products and many other companies products governments around the world already have the source code of because Microsoft and others had to hand it over and keep updating it to get contracts. So law could just start with what is archived.

[sinepgib]

The reality is a lot of software used by governments around the world have the source code archived. Yes MS Windows and MS office and many other Microsoft products and many other companies products governments around the world already have the source code of because Microsoft and others had to hand it over and keep updating it to get contracts. So law could just start with what is archived.

Nice to know!

[Rccero]

As a fan of abandonware, I'm happy to hear an old iconic software will be opensourced and maintained by the community.
I wish they released Fine Artist and Creative Writer next, those are literal pieces of my childhood.

[sophisticles]

The sad thing is that this software from MS, even though it's 27 years old, and quite ancient by computer standards, is still more advanced than anything available in Linux as GPL'd software.

And yes, i know about Blender, but the reality is that this MS software was very easy to use, and capable for it's time, it's the type of software that helped make Windows the defacto standard on the PC.

[mikenelson446]

I generally use different types of sources to watch movies (download free or watch online).

[prometeo]

I have been running Windoes for years on dozens of machines and at least from Windoes 7 to now I haven't gotten any crashes

Maybe I'm unlucky, but my company's laptop (HP Elitebook 450 G7), now less frequently, locks up hard while using only outlook (2019) and Teams. Not much other software installed, apart form Notepad++, The Gimp, Firefox, Office 2019 Pro and Videolan. YMMV.

[sinepgib]

Maybe I'm unlucky, but my company's laptop (HP Elitebook 450 G7), now less frequently, locks up hard while using only outlook (2019) and Teams. Not much other software installed, apart form Notepad++, The Gimp, Firefox, Office 2019 Pro and Videolan. YMMV.

This is not necessarily your case, but often company issued laptops crash more often, regardless of OS, because of the spyware they install to admin it running kernel modules of dubious quality. I had that experience with MacOS for example. I had an awful impression because the touchbar would crash, Bluetooth would crash, sound would crash, MPV was unable to close (it hanged)... All that until I was moved to a different client that didn't require that crap installed and was able to factory reset. Now it's flawless. I still don't like the lack of flexibility tho.

[prometeo]

This is not necessarily your case, but often company issued laptops crash more often, regardless of OS, because of the spyware they install to admin it running kernel modules of dubious quality. I had that experience with MacOS for example. I had an awful impression because the touchbar would crash, Bluetooth would crash, sound would crash, MPV was unable to close (it hanged)... All that until I was moved to a different client that didn't require that crap installed and was able to factory reset. Now it's flawless. I still don't like the lack of flexibility tho.

I've seen this in my previous company, but the current one barely installs only Cisco AnyConnect VPN client... My guess is the model of the laptop which is problematic: seems like G8 is a much solid performer, but I'll have to wait 2 more years before the change (or an earlier change of company).