This is an important point. Proprietary software can die in a number of ways. Since examples are fun, I'm throwing another one in. There was a piece of proprietary software which I wanted and purchased. Unfortunately, it was software with a small market and many of the people who wanted it chose to pirate it instead. The company concerned dealt with this by releasing an update which contained two additions: A) it didn't crash on the weird Unicode characters anymore and B) it checked online for the validity of your license and would stop working if you stayed offline or were found to use a pirated license. People still pirated it. So they went out of business and the licensing server shut down. I was left with the option to use the old version and deal with the crashes or not use the software at all. The older version was only an option for me since I had kept it in a backup; those who purchased later would have had a harder time. Another option was to try to break the licensing server requirement, essentially pirating it myself and breaking the EULA. I had paid them money for it, but it wasn't enough for them to continue supporting the software.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
