this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2023
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I study in biotech and currently doing a traineeship in a university lab that likely operates in a similiar way, albeit we are way less expensive to operate and require a bit less precision and safety than medical stuff (so for them the problems here are exacerbated).
Instruments like the ones we use are super expensive (we're talking in the order of hundreds of thousands of €), funding is not great, salaries are often laughable, the amount of data is huge and sometimes keeping it for many years is very important. On top of that most people here barely understand computer and software beyond whet they've used, which makes sense, they went to study biotech and environmental stuff not computer science. There's an IT team in the university but honestly they barely renew the security certificates for the login pages for the university wifi so that's laughable, and granted they're likely underpaid, probably a result of low public funding as well. Sure, none of the problems would be too impacting if we had all the funding in the world and people who know what they're doing, but that is not the case and that's why we need regulations.
What you're suggesting is treating the symptoms but not the disease. Making certain file formats compatible with other programs is not an easy undertaking and certainly not for people without IT experience. Software for tools this expensive should either be open source from the get-go or immediately open-sourced as soon as it's abandoned or company goes bust because ain't no way we can afford to just throw out a perfectly functioning and serviceable tool that costed us 100s of thousands of €s just because a company went bust or decided that "no you must buy a whole new instrument we won't give you old software no more" in order to access the data they made incompatible with other stuff. Even with plenty of funding to workaround the issue that shouldn't be necessary, it's a waste of time and money just so a greedy company can make a few extra bucks.
So again and again and again, I was not arguing against the abandonware issue. I take issue with how the problem is being stop-gapped in this current situation and not in some hypothetical alternate timeline.
Great. I didn't imply otherwise.
So the lab guy maintaining Windows 95 era computer's hardware, barely understands computers. Got it. I suppose this same lab guy won't be able to do anything even if the source code was available and would still being doing the same job.
I didn't say it isn't. I said they've had ~20 years to figure it out. What would source code being available solve for them then? We could assume other people would come together to maintain it, sure. I've also talked about other solutions in replies. There are even more solutions. I wasn't trying to cover all bases there. It is just that within a couple of decades this has been a problem, there has been plenty of time to solve it.
Oh OK, so that makes it less complicated. I thought the assumption here is that, in general, anyone in that lab barely understands a computer or how software works. So, who's going to maintain it? Hopefully, others, sure. I actually do talk about this in other replies and how it is something I support and that, in this case, the solution is to deliver the source with the product. FOSS is fantastic. Why can't that just be done now by these same interested parties? Or are we back to "can't computer" again? Then what good is the source code anyway?
But again, that's a "what-if things were different" which isn't what I was discussing. I was discussing this specific, real and fairly common issue of attempting to maintain EOL/EOSL hardware. It is a losing game and eventually, it just isn't going to work anymore.
Alright, the source code is available for this person. Let's just say that. What now?
What can be done right now, is fairly straight forward and there are numerous step-by-step guides. That's to virtualize the environment. There is also an option to use hardware passthru, if there is some unmentioned piece of equipment. This could be done with some old laptop or computer that you've probably tossed in the dumpster 10 years ago. The cost is likely just some labor. Perhaps that same lab guy can poke around or if they're at a university, have their department reach out to the Computer Science or other IT related teaching department and ask if there are any volunteers, even for undergrads. There are very likely students that would want to take it on, just because they want to figure it out and nothing else.
There may be an edge case where it won't work due to some embedded proprietary hardware but that's yet another hypothetical issue at stake which is to open source hardware. That's great. Who's going to make that work in a modern motherboard? The person that you've supposed can't do that because they barely understand a computer at all?
In this current reality, with the specific part of the post I am addressing, the solution currently of sustaining something ancient with diminishing supply is definitely not the answer. That is the point I was making. There is a potential of ~20 years of labor hours. There is a potential of ~20 years of portioning of budgets. And let's not forget, according to them, it is "CRITICAL" to their operations. Yet, it is maintained by a "lab guy" who may or may not have anything other than a basic understanding of computers using hardware that's no longer made and hoping to cannibalize, use second hand and find in bins somewhere.
If this "lab guy" isn't up to the task, then why are they entrusted with something so critical with nothing done about it in approximately two decades? If they are up to the task, then why isn't a solution with longevity and real risk mitigation being taken on? It is a short-sighted mentality to just kick it down the road over and over again plainly hoping something critical is never lost.
If it's open source someone who knows about software can do it so that we don't have to. Doesn't even need to be a guy in the lab since he could just maintain a github repo and we'd use his thing.
Cause the instrument is important and replacing it, aside from being a massive waste of a perfectly functioning instrument, costs hundreds of thousands if not millions of € that we can't spend just because some company decided to be shit and some dude on Lemmy said we shouldn't use stop-gap measures for a problem that's completely artificial.
Why would you need to replace the instrument? You only need to replace the computers' functions. Why does it need to cost anything other than some other old workstation tossed into an ewaste bin years ago?
As opposed to some dude on Lemmy bemoaning that there just can't be solved without source even though I've given actual solutions available now and for little to no material cost?
You have admitted that you'd still have to rely on someone else's expertise and motivation in the hopes that they'd solve the problem for the lab, yet, in my opinion, you're just discarding solutions that I've presented as if they aren't solutions at all because, at least in one of your points, that they'd have to rely on someone else's expertise and motivation in the hopes that they'd solve the problem for the lab. Even then, as I said, they've had decades to figure it out and there exist step-by-step instructions already that are freely available to help them solve the problem or get them almost to the end, assuming, there is some proprietary hardware never mentioned.
Anyway, I don't really have anything else to add to the conversation. So you can have the last word, if you wish.
Because the company made it so it only works with its specific software. Sure maybe you could try and find a way to hack another software in it but that is significantly harder than the stop-gap measures or full-replacement. If you mess up you can end up breaking an extremely expensive tool, and, since funding is extremely limited (talking bare-minimum or even less sometimes), that means you won't risk it.
Yeah well one Lemmy dude actually knows the situation and how things work around a lab and one doesn't seem to understand. It isn't "little to no cost" evidently or most of us sure as shit wouldn't be dealing with stop-gap measures.
There would easily be a team of software engineers who would take on maintaining a lot of the abandonware software we use in a lab since there's a lot of folks who still rely on that software that the company abandoned, including people who know about software more. The key difference you don't understand is that if the source was open it wouldn't be necessary to have an IT enthusiast in every single lab that needs it, you only need 1 or 2 to maintain a repo.
First of all, not all abandonware is decades old. Secondly, people are already using the stop-gap solutions that you'd find on the internet, like never connecting the computer to the internet and pray nothing breaks, for example.