Is there a program that allows very old software to be used on pc’s for charity?
Fox example, maybe I wanted to get some old 486’s and refurbish them. Install Win 95 and Office 95. Give the pc’s to under privileged families that needed something for their kids homework.
Is there any legal sources for this software?
Or does Microsoft enforce their license forever?
Licensed software does not automatically lose its license after any amount of time.
If you want a free operating system that can run an office type of application, install linux and open office.
They are tossing much better computers than 486s out into the trash these days.
microsoft products that will run on those machines has a very different look and feel to what those people might see elsewhere. you might as well go with linux products.
engineer_comp_geek is right. Commercial software doesn’t lose its license. There is the nebulous concept of ‘abandonware’ but that it still isn’t strictly legal. You are just betting that no one cares enough to do anything about it.
That said, giving 486 computers with Windows 95 on it is cruel and unusual punishment and no good can come from it. There are plenty of user friendly flavors of Linux that make good desktop operating systems like Ubuntu for example. Those are free and completely current. There is also a version of just about anything else as an OpenSource work available as well. Some of them may not be well polished or user friendly but they are still better than obsolete software. Plenty of people choose to use Linux as a desktop operating system and run nothing but free software and it is improving all the time.
Actually there’s nothing wrong with a 486. Win 95 and Office 95 runs pretty fast on it. We had two dozen 486’s running that software in our office in 1997. Hundreds of documents were created, and dozens of spreadsheets tracked data. We were running Ms Access reports against our system database daily. It was a very productive environment.
What turns a 486 into a boat anchor is modern software. Install the current IE or Firefox. Now you have a slug. Lord help you if you tried to install a modern version of office. <shudder>
It’s new software that made us curse those old pc’s and throw them in the trash. If you stuck with the software from that era then the pc would run just as smoothly today as it did in 1997. When Win 98 came out, suddenly our 486 was crap.
Anyhow, I did want to ask about the license. I kind of figured they never expired. Fifty years from now some museum will have a 386 with Win 3.1 illegally because they couldn’t find a license key. 
I think you might be misremembering. Win 95 ran poorly on 486s but Pentium 133s or above did fine with Win 95. A 486 ran fast with Win 3.11 & DOS 6.22 and the version of office that installed off 20 diskettes. Even the fastest 486 was slow for Win 95 and especially for office 95.
So there’s nothing wrong with a 486 unless you actually want to run usable software on it? Do I have that right?
As for the question in the OP, no, there never was any licensing “lock” on any Microsoft OS until XP. Legally they could come after you for pirating win95 but I doubt they’d give a shit. But I have to ask why you hate poor people so much that you’d force them to use windows 95 in 2012.
We were running 486dx4 with 32 mb or maybe 64mb? I forget what the max memory was for the motherboard. It was nearly equivalent to the very first Pentium 60’s that came out. We bought the 486DX4’s because those early Pentiums had severe heating issues. The old joke was you could use them for a coffee cup warmer. 
Of course within a year they came out with the Pentium 133 and the heating problem was solved.
I saw some old Pentiums and 486’s at a salvage place. I was thinking about fixing up a dozen for a charity that helps kids with school computers.
I suspect the current Linux builds wouldn’t do all that well either with less than a P3 450. We have a few of those at work as print servers. Linux is the perfect platform for a print server.
My job is always 5 years behind the corporate world. We were still using Pentium 233’s up until 2003 running Win 2000. We just don’t have the budget in the public sector to buy new pc’s every few years.
As software licensing depends on copyright, the answer is that a license is no longer necessary once the copyright expires. As the copyright term in the USA is 70 years from the death of the author, this is essentially irrelevant for computer software.
I tried running Win95 on a virtual machine for a while and it was an extraordinary pain. Mainly, no modern browsers were compatible with it and the browser that came with it couldn’t load many modern websites.
Actually, since it is copyright by the company (work for hire)*, isn’t it 95 years?
Brian
*At least most software
One way to go about this is to become a registered non-profit (or work with an existing one).
Microsoft’s actually pretty darned good about giving reduced-cost licenses to charitable organizations. In the past, I worked for a non-profit computer refurbisher (we’d take junked computers, rebuild them, and install Windows XP and OpenOffice on them and give them away to needy families). We were able to negotiate either free or very low cost copies of Windows XP (like $25ish per copy? I can’t remember) and OpenOffice was more usable, especially considering current file formats, than very old copies of MS Office.
It’s even easier now with TechSoup, which connects non-profits with big tech/software organizations for legitimate copies of very-low-cost software. Each copy of Windows 7 Professional costs only $6.00 (technically an admin/handling fee).
If that’s still too much money, you ought to be able to find some grant money for this sort of thing, maybe by working with poverty or church groups.
I believe you are correct - the copyright term on works-for-hire appears to be 95 years from first publication.
CPU speed isn’t the problem with 95 on a 486, RAM is.
16 MB works just fine.
8 MB, not so good.
4 MB is painfully slow, although I did it for about 3 months.
Doesn’t every charity that does this kind of thing wipe the HD and install a linux derivate as pretty much standard?
Even if Microsoft gave the charity licenses for $1 each machine, that’s still money they could better use elsewhere.
Maybe some do. Ours didn’t.
I think a compelling case can be made for desktop Linux in contexts where interoperability and support can be structurally provided, but I don’t think it makes sense in the OP’s scenario where individual under-privileged households have to interact with a broader Windows world. If something goes wrong, who are they going to go to for help? Windows users and support are everywhere; desktop Linux not so much. (There are online forums, but I don’t see this particular kind of user being very successful at even asking the right questions, much less getting good solutions).
As someone who likes tinkering around with older computers I wouldn’t give away anything older than a Pentium II. Refurbished Pre-Pentium machines can be quite valuable.
There are several Linux distros that are designed to run on older equipment. There’s DSL (Damn Small Linux), Puppy Linux, Slitaz. I wouldn’t expect any of them to run well on something as old as a 486 though.
There is a freeware DOS clone called FreeDOS and several GUI’s that run on it. The most prominent being OpenGEM which is a lot like WIN 3.1.