Remember comp.sources.hp48?

[Chris Dreher]

(08-27-2017 04:15 PM)EugeneNine Wrote:  Thats where open source software is a big help. Once I got away from MS products I've not had to convert anything. I made the conversion in 2002 so I've had 15 years of stability now.

The other issue with close source products is even if you keep the software it might still not run. Some old versions that need to contact a license or activation server for example.

Related story (but a slight digression): I recently had to view some WRI files. These files are are from Write which was a simple word-processor that shipped built into Windows from 1.0 thru 3.1. However, it was superseded by WordPad in Windows 95. (more info)

The problem? WordPad is incompatible with WRI files and there are no handy utilities to convert WRI files... except that open source LibreOffice does. LibreOffice saved my bacon.