AbandonWare

To:  Software Licenseholders

We the undersigned would like to make a request of the software industry. All of us, for various reasons, find a use in our daily lives for obsolete versions of popular software titles.

Some of us are low income, and unable to afford high priced software, much less the brand new computers such software requires. Some of us are hobbyists, with older computers we enjoy restoring and putting to use. Some of us restore such computers for low-cost or free distribution to schools and low income families.

All of us have difficulty obtaining software to make these older computers useable. We cannot visit a software company's website and order the 1991 version of their software on 800k disks. Often it is impossible to find an intact, original copy of such old software for sale second hand. Therefore we often find ourselves in the position of either having no software, or having illegal software.

None of us are interested in being lawbreakers, so here is our proposal:

Software companies who own the licensing rights to software more than two full version numbers back from the current version or more than seven years old, or owning the rights to wholly discontinued titles, should release these titles to the public domain as freeware.

These titles would be released without any warranty of useability, offer of support, or included documentation, thereby avoiding the hassle of having to train company employees to support obsolete titles. These programs would not even have to be offered for download off the company's own website. Simply putting a notice up on the license-holder's website, announcing the release of older software to freeware status would be sufficient.

Owners of the new 'freeware' applications could then forward copies to individuals interested in hosting download sites for older titles. We are confident that older computer users like ourselves would produce the initiative and resources to enable access to these titles without producing any added burden on the original license holders whatsoever.

Apple software makes older versions of their Macintosh OS System software available for free download, and has not seen any notable decrease in interest in the new versions. There will always be a thriving market for new computers, and improved versions of software to run on them. We do not believe that any software company would i^cur financial harm or any other major setback as a result of this plan.

We see no reason why older software titles should lapse into unavailability, as long as there are computers to run them, and individuals interested in using them. Considering that a software company is no longer bringing in revenue from these older versions, we feel that releasing them to freeware status is a very viable, and much desired option.

If your company is interested in negotiating a release of any of your old software versions to freeware status, please contact one of the following designated individuals. We would be extremely pleased to hear from you.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

The AbandonWare Petition to Software Licenseholders was created by and written by Teresa Knezek (abandonware@mivox.com).  This petition is hosted here at www.PetitionOnline.com as a public service. There is no endorsement of this petition, express or implied, by Artifice, Inc. or our sponsors. For technical support please use our simple Petition Help form.

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