8 ms·

Dealing with abandonware (2024)

148 points by mondobe 9mo ago

SlavikCA 9mo ago
They told us that with AI you can vibe-code anything now... So, no need to make old program to work. Just write new one. /sarcasm
- userbinator 9mo ago
  Or you could have AI figure out how to crack it.
deepsun 9mo ago
Might be illegal to break someone else's proprietary software, no matter how abandoned it is. Try to ask them for source code, with the intention to open-source it. Then you (and maybe others!) can break it whole day long.
- ghaff 9mo ago
  Easier said than done. - It's risk for them with basically no upside. - Someone at their company needs to do a deep-dive into the code and verify that there aren't licensed third-party libraries and possibly remove them. Even companies that genuinely want to open source software that they've acquired may spend a year doing this sort of due diligence.
  - tlavoie 9mo ago
    Well, or they could release a patch that simply nerfs the license check on the binary. No risk in terms of lost profits, for software they no longer sell.
    - jasonjayr 9mo ago
      That assumes the (a) the source is still available (b) the build environment is still available and working, (c) a staff member is still available that understands the system and/or (d) the time to figure it out and rebuild, test, and create the binary diff/patch ....
      - yardstick 8mo ago
        Or could just release the tool that issues new keys/serials/licenses.
      - tlavoie 9mo ago
        Well, yeah. The point was that there are changes that could be made, without having to make it possible for everyone else to build, that would enable continued binary support.
- avazhi 9mo ago
  > Might be illegal to break someone else's proprietary software, no matter how abandoned it is. Oh no! Anyway Snark aside, what you do locally on your own PC in your own home is kinda nobody else’s business, especially when you aren’t cracking it to share it with others. Pretty sure all the arguments were already hashed out in the ‘80s when VCR companies tried to block recording television to cassette tapes. Literally nobody cares.
  - thaumasiotes 8mo ago
    > Pretty sure all the arguments were already hashed out in the ‘80s when VCR companies tried to block recording television to cassette tapes. Why would VCR companies try to block this?
    - tracker1 8mo ago
      Not the VCR companies but the TV stations and Cable companies.
  - deepsun 8mo ago
    Well, didn't think of that, but agree completely. In order to sue the post author, the software copyright holder must claim some damages. I doubt they will find enough damages to pay legal fees.
userbinator 9mo ago
Fortunately it wasn't a SaaS that shut down. I would first search keygen/crack archives to see if some famous scene group had already done the needful long ago, although for software as obscure as this, it's less likely. Then again, I've seen some very obscure software ("there's an app for that!?") when browsing those before.
garganzol 9mo ago
The problem with that software title is caused by a hostile licensing system it uses. It relies on an offline form of online activation where the activation key is tied to your installation ID, which in turn depends on OS/hardware identifier of your computer. This is an overkill IMO. I cannot imagine people working with ceramic tiles cracking a static licensing system. Yes, they can overshare license keys but realistically this does not happen too often, and there are non-invasive ways to circumvent this.
- tracker1 8mo ago
  I've worked on parts of a training platform for a specific professional group... There's literally been widespread hacks to bypass the need to watch mandated training material. You'd be surprised the efforts people will go through to get to/through something they need.
banbangtuth 9mo ago
Kinda off topic but related. But is it realistic these days to just expect software to write once and run forever? I am a TypeScript/Frontend guy by trade, but I always admire languages like Go. It seems like a simple language that I can write once and maintain forever or once in a blue moon. Everytime I want to write something in TypeScript and then I pull bunch of crazy dependencies, I began to question if it is worth it? These days I am just pulling React, TypeScript, and just do CSS. If I need a dependency I'll try to just code it from scratch with LLM. Is it realistic to expect, React, TypeScript to be maintenance free forever? Since those are basically just abstraction on top of HTML/JS/CSS which are rock solid. Ideally the home-baked software that I build will be just using very simple technologies, and I can just vibe/LLM code all the dependencies, or worst case just vendor it, and update it once a year or longer.
- Liftyee 9mo ago
  I'd reasonably expect software to run forever insofar as the environment it's run in doesn't change. Essentially, no OS or dependency updates - network is inevitably going to get broken. Anecdata: My Wii (2006) console has had a few hardware issues I've fixed, but the software is just as responsive as a decade ago (though many external networks/servers have shut down). Homebrew community is very much alive and has expanded its utility.
  - banbangtuth 9mo ago
    I was thinking to defer to the compiler to make things stable. i.e, Go or JavaScript virtual machine should just run forever and able to decide with OS updates. On the frontend world, the browser so far has been super reliable in maintaining backwards compatibility of HTML, CSS and JS for years and years.
    - mjevans 9mo ago
      Unix shell script also more or less reached a stable state. It's even optional to target Bash rather than just shell.
- 9mo ago
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
Taniwha 9mo ago
You can go to this effort to get it to make the right magic number .... or just find the place where it gets tested and replace the conditional branch with a unconditional branch (or a no-op) Having said that I once wrote 68k code that was an executable copyright message, and other code that if it discovered it wasn't running on an authorised machine logged to a known port, sent an email, unlinked the binary, queued "sudo reboot", killed the parent process and then exited (all the authorised machines were mine, running a bespoke kernel)
- stevekemp 8mo ago
  All the way I was thinking the same. Why patch the binary to get the correct "system identity" value, to match the license/serial-key you've got? Instead patch the serial-check out of the software entirely.
  - userbinator 8mo ago
    For crackers, keygenning is more fun.
kazinator 9mo ago
That's real abandonware. These days people gripe and moan about "abandonware" when they have the source code. Oh shit, no new commit in 8 months! Abandonware!
- fithisux 9mo ago
  I agree with you. If the source code is there, theoretically is not abandonware, but handed to the community.
- 1970-01-01 8mo ago
  To be fair, GitHub code rots much faster these days. I would assume anything with a specific job to do (not games) that is untouched for 8 months is circling the drain and expiring in another 8 months.
  - tracker1 8mo ago
    I generally go by the state of the issues and unmerged commits instead of just the last commit date. Some things are just functionally complete.
snickerer 8mo ago
The horrors of non-free software... When I become king of the United Continents, I will make a new rule: If you don't publish high-quality updates for your software for one year, it will become open source automatically.
- hulitu 8mo ago
  > If you don't publish high-quality updates for your software for one year, I don't think that Microsoft or Google will like this.
  - theflyingelvis 8mo ago
    I don’t like it either but he’d be ‘king’ so it wouldn’t really matter if anyone liked it or not
    - gus_massa 8mo ago
      It's not so easy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_XVI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_XVI
- ben_w 8mo ago
  Mm. I think "any" update would be sufficient for 95% of cases, doesn't have to be high-quality. Even if it's just the copyright date changing at least once per year, that tells you one specific named entity is claiming to care about it: when nobody does even that much, everyone automatically has the right to do whatever they want with the software. Which reminds me, I need to update the copyright date on my website…
- vrighter 8mo ago
  Forced enshittification?
clickety_clack 8mo ago
It might not be that hard to make your own version of this, maybe average HSL values for each square or something. How are the available tile colors stored?
qxxx 8mo ago
reminds me of my own software I created and was selling online 20 years ago. I lost the source code but people still wanted to buy it. So I sold it for few years (shareware). I had a serial key generator for windows but it was annoying to do this manually.. I wanted to extract the key generation algo so it can be generated automatically after payment. I also tried many disassembly tools like ghidra, but without luck. I decided to stop selling / supporting the software. Nowadays, I still get the occasional mail from people asking where they can buy it, or of there are some updates.
- dijit 8mo ago
  You could give someone permission to crack it. It's pretty clear that the program has utility, otherwise people wouldn't ask. Giving it to computer cracking groups as a real world program that they can use as a teaching tool has some value too. I mean, if you you're not willing to take the money for the program anymore, then you have little to lose with this. (Unless there's some other reason not to do it, brand harm for example, or third-party code that's licensed and that you do not have permission to subgrant reverse engineering work)
nick_m 8mo ago
I have a tangentially-related question. I've been using Novagraph Chartist since the Windows 3.1 days back when I was 17 (I'm now climbing 50!). It seems that the original company behind this has vanished, I've asked for support, but no joy there, I hope the author is still alive. I'm on Chartist 5.2. It needed online activation towards the end of its life. Whilst in these modern days of hi-DPI screens and anti-aliased lines, I still love using Chartist - I know all of the keyboard shortcuts and I can use it to create a diagram faster than using anything else. Does someone have a patch for it or something? Thanks, Nick.
jeena 8mo ago
I'm not sure if it's abandon ware but I found a gist which attempted to get pictures from this Korean Kindergarten app for backup which we also use. I tried it and it only half worked and you had to copy a cookie out of the browser which would expire after a couple of days. I took it and extended it added a login with selenium or what it is called and now I can run it daily and get those pictures out and into my immich. Instance. The script was already a couple of years old and outside of Korea nobody uses KidsNote, I made it used ware again: https://git.jeena.net/jeena/kidsnote-backup https://git.jeena.net/jeena/kidsnote-backup
1970-01-01 8mo ago
>I use a MacBook, and this application is Windows only, so executing it is out of the question. This is where things went off the rails. Choosing hard paths should be done when you're exploring, and never when you're fixing a business issue. Why didn't they just try it out in a VM or even a mega cheap VPS? Why is doing it the easiest way imaginable completely out of the question?? I have no empathy for this kind of pain.
tracker1 8mo ago
For what it's worth, will probably run via WINE for long after Window's support fades... even though Windows itself is pretty legendary in terms of backwards compatibility.

148 points by mondobe 9mo ago

They told us that with AI you can vibe-code anything now... So, no need to make old program to work. Just write new one. /sarcasm

userbinator 9mo ago
Or you could have AI figure out how to crack it.

deepsun 9mo ago

Might be illegal to break someone else's proprietary software, no matter how abandoned it is. Try to ask them for source code, with the intention to open-source it. Then you (and maybe others!) can break it whole day long.

ghaff 9mo ago
Easier said than done. - It's risk for them with basically no upside. - Someone at their company needs to do a deep-dive into the code and verify that there aren't licensed third-party libraries and possibly remove them. Even companies that genuinely want to open source software that they've acquired may spend a year doing this sort of due diligence.
- tlavoie 9mo ago
  Well, or they could release a patch that simply nerfs the license check on the binary. No risk in terms of lost profits, for software they no longer sell.
  - jasonjayr 9mo ago
    That assumes the (a) the source is still available (b) the build environment is still available and working, (c) a staff member is still available that understands the system and/or (d) the time to figure it out and rebuild, test, and create the binary diff/patch ....
    - yardstick 8mo ago
      Or could just release the tool that issues new keys/serials/licenses.
    - tlavoie 9mo ago
      Well, yeah. The point was that there are changes that could be made, without having to make it possible for everyone else to build, that would enable continued binary support.
avazhi 9mo ago
> Might be illegal to break someone else's proprietary software, no matter how abandoned it is. Oh no! Anyway Snark aside, what you do locally on your own PC in your own home is kinda nobody else’s business, especially when you aren’t cracking it to share it with others. Pretty sure all the arguments were already hashed out in the ‘80s when VCR companies tried to block recording television to cassette tapes. Literally nobody cares.
- thaumasiotes 8mo ago
  > Pretty sure all the arguments were already hashed out in the ‘80s when VCR companies tried to block recording television to cassette tapes. Why would VCR companies try to block this?
  - tracker1 8mo ago
    Not the VCR companies but the TV stations and Cable companies.
- deepsun 8mo ago
  Well, didn't think of that, but agree completely. In order to sue the post author, the software copyright holder must claim some damages. I doubt they will find enough damages to pay legal fees.

userbinator 9mo ago

Fortunately it wasn't a SaaS that shut down. I would first search keygen/crack archives to see if some famous scene group had already done the needful long ago, although for software as obscure as this, it's less likely. Then again, I've seen some very obscure software ("there's an app for that!?") when browsing those before.

garganzol 9mo ago

The problem with that software title is caused by a hostile licensing system it uses. It relies on an offline form of online activation where the activation key is tied to your installation ID, which in turn depends on OS/hardware identifier of your computer. This is an overkill IMO. I cannot imagine people working with ceramic tiles cracking a static licensing system. Yes, they can overshare license keys but realistically this does not happen too often, and there are non-invasive ways to circumvent this.

tracker1 8mo ago
I've worked on parts of a training platform for a specific professional group... There's literally been widespread hacks to bypass the need to watch mandated training material. You'd be surprised the efforts people will go through to get to/through something they need.

banbangtuth 9mo ago

Kinda off topic but related. But is it realistic these days to just expect software to write once and run forever? I am a TypeScript/Frontend guy by trade, but I always admire languages like Go. It seems like a simple language that I can write once and maintain forever or once in a blue moon. Everytime I want to write something in TypeScript and then I pull bunch of crazy dependencies, I began to question if it is worth it? These days I am just pulling React, TypeScript, and just do CSS. If I need a dependency I'll try to just code it from scratch with LLM. Is it realistic to expect, React, TypeScript to be maintenance free forever? Since those are basically just abstraction on top of HTML/JS/CSS which are rock solid. Ideally the home-baked software that I build will be just using very simple technologies, and I can just vibe/LLM code all the dependencies, or worst case just vendor it, and update it once a year or longer.

Liftyee 9mo ago
I'd reasonably expect software to run forever insofar as the environment it's run in doesn't change. Essentially, no OS or dependency updates - network is inevitably going to get broken. Anecdata: My Wii (2006) console has had a few hardware issues I've fixed, but the software is just as responsive as a decade ago (though many external networks/servers have shut down). Homebrew community is very much alive and has expanded its utility.
- banbangtuth 9mo ago
  I was thinking to defer to the compiler to make things stable. i.e, Go or JavaScript virtual machine should just run forever and able to decide with OS updates. On the frontend world, the browser so far has been super reliable in maintaining backwards compatibility of HTML, CSS and JS for years and years.
  - mjevans 9mo ago
    Unix shell script also more or less reached a stable state. It's even optional to target Bash rather than just shell.
9mo ago

deleted 9mo ago

[deleted]

Taniwha 9mo ago

You can go to this effort to get it to make the right magic number .... or just find the place where it gets tested and replace the conditional branch with a unconditional branch (or a no-op) Having said that I once wrote 68k code that was an executable copyright message, and other code that if it discovered it wasn't running on an authorised machine logged to a known port, sent an email, unlinked the binary, queued "sudo reboot", killed the parent process and then exited (all the authorised machines were mine, running a bespoke kernel)

stevekemp 8mo ago
All the way I was thinking the same. Why patch the binary to get the correct "system identity" value, to match the license/serial-key you've got? Instead patch the serial-check out of the software entirely.
- userbinator 8mo ago
  For crackers, keygenning is more fun.

kazinator 9mo ago

That's real abandonware. These days people gripe and moan about "abandonware" when they have the source code. Oh shit, no new commit in 8 months! Abandonware!

fithisux 9mo ago
I agree with you. If the source code is there, theoretically is not abandonware, but handed to the community.
1970-01-01 8mo ago
To be fair, GitHub code rots much faster these days. I would assume anything with a specific job to do (not games) that is untouched for 8 months is circling the drain and expiring in another 8 months.
- tracker1 8mo ago
  I generally go by the state of the issues and unmerged commits instead of just the last commit date. Some things are just functionally complete.

snickerer 8mo ago

The horrors of non-free software... When I become king of the United Continents, I will make a new rule: If you don't publish high-quality updates for your software for one year, it will become open source automatically.

hulitu 8mo ago
> If you don't publish high-quality updates for your software for one year, I don't think that Microsoft or Google will like this.
- theflyingelvis 8mo ago
  I don’t like it either but he’d be ‘king’ so it wouldn’t really matter if anyone liked it or not
  - gus_massa 8mo ago
    It's not so easy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_XVI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_XVI
ben_w 8mo ago
Mm. I think "any" update would be sufficient for 95% of cases, doesn't have to be high-quality. Even if it's just the copyright date changing at least once per year, that tells you one specific named entity is claiming to care about it: when nobody does even that much, everyone automatically has the right to do whatever they want with the software. Which reminds me, I need to update the copyright date on my website…
vrighter 8mo ago
Forced enshittification?

clickety_clack 8mo ago

It might not be that hard to make your own version of this, maybe average HSL values for each square or something. How are the available tile colors stored?

qxxx 8mo ago

reminds me of my own software I created and was selling online 20 years ago. I lost the source code but people still wanted to buy it. So I sold it for few years (shareware). I had a serial key generator for windows but it was annoying to do this manually.. I wanted to extract the key generation algo so it can be generated automatically after payment. I also tried many disassembly tools like ghidra, but without luck. I decided to stop selling / supporting the software. Nowadays, I still get the occasional mail from people asking where they can buy it, or of there are some updates.

dijit 8mo ago
You could give someone permission to crack it. It's pretty clear that the program has utility, otherwise people wouldn't ask. Giving it to computer cracking groups as a real world program that they can use as a teaching tool has some value too. I mean, if you you're not willing to take the money for the program anymore, then you have little to lose with this. (Unless there's some other reason not to do it, brand harm for example, or third-party code that's licensed and that you do not have permission to subgrant reverse engineering work)

nick_m 8mo ago

I have a tangentially-related question. I've been using Novagraph Chartist since the Windows 3.1 days back when I was 17 (I'm now climbing 50!). It seems that the original company behind this has vanished, I've asked for support, but no joy there, I hope the author is still alive. I'm on Chartist 5.2. It needed online activation towards the end of its life. Whilst in these modern days of hi-DPI screens and anti-aliased lines, I still love using Chartist - I know all of the keyboard shortcuts and I can use it to create a diagram faster than using anything else. Does someone have a patch for it or something? Thanks, Nick.

jeena 8mo ago

I'm not sure if it's abandon ware but I found a gist which attempted to get pictures from this Korean Kindergarten app for backup which we also use. I tried it and it only half worked and you had to copy a cookie out of the browser which would expire after a couple of days. I took it and extended it added a login with selenium or what it is called and now I can run it daily and get those pictures out and into my immich. Instance. The script was already a couple of years old and outside of Korea nobody uses KidsNote, I made it used ware again: https://git.jeena.net/jeena/kidsnote-backup https://git.jeena.net/jeena/kidsnote-backup

1970-01-01 8mo ago

>I use a MacBook, and this application is Windows only, so executing it is out of the question. This is where things went off the rails. Choosing hard paths should be done when you're exploring, and never when you're fixing a business issue. Why didn't they just try it out in a VM or even a mega cheap VPS? Why is doing it the easiest way imaginable completely out of the question?? I have no empathy for this kind of pain.

tracker1 8mo ago

For what it's worth, will probably run via WINE for long after Window's support fades... even though Windows itself is pretty legendary in terms of backwards compatibility.