[comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d] What to do with factual downgrades

ts@uwasa.fi (Timo Salmi) (02/17/91)

In article <yLcFX1w163w@zwaaney.uucp> tim@zwaaney.uucp (Timothy De Zwaan) writes:
>jay@umd5.umd.edu (Jay Elvove) writes:
>
>> Speaking of Norton 5.0, I've just received my upgrade and notice that
:
>Directory Sort (DS) is been rolled into Speed Disk (SD).  It's an option
>on the sort order menu.  Because I find this clumsy at best, I've just
>kept the old ds.exe from version 4.
>
>I've kept a lot of things from the old version.  IMHO, version 5 was a
>downgrade.
:

While a discussion of a commercial product like Norton doesn't
belong in this group, mind you(!), there is a interesting sideline
in what is being said here.  That is the fact that some new versions
of the programs distributed here can be considered actual
downgrades.  Of course this always is a subjective opinion.  Be this
as may, this poses a problem for a moderator of an FTP site.  The
policy I've personally taken, is that if I consider something to be
a downgrade, I retain both the old and the new version for public
download.  The cases where I have done this include Zmodem
(dsz####.zip) since the later versions are crippleware in a mild
sense, Ample Notice calendar (an###.zip) because of the drastic
change in the outlook, and infop145.zip will also go into this
category, since it no longer contained the sources. 
   Yes, and this happens also with commercial products in many
forms.  One of my biggest disappointments in that respect was the
update from Turbo Pascal 5.5 to 6.0.  TP was suddenly turned into a
specialist visionary tool, and with a clumsier user interface.  But
if you want to follow up this latter part, let's discuss it in
comp.lang.pascal, not in c.b.i.p.d, ok?

...................................................................
Prof. Timo Salmi        
Moderating at garbo.uwasa.fi anonymous ftp archives 128.214.12.37
School of Business Studies, University of Vaasa, SF-65101, Finland
Internet: ts@chyde.uwasa.fi Funet: gado::salmi Bitnet: salmi@finfun