4 ms·

I'm not a fan of pretty much anything on this list, but I do think the thing about phasing out Windows XP does stand apart. I don't know exactly how long you sh

I'm not a fan of pretty much anything on this list, but I do think the thing about phasing out Windows XP does stand apart. I don't know exactly how long you should expect an OS to be supported, but I feel like 12 years falls somewhere on the right side of that line. They add the following disclaimer about that: > A person or company has the right to cease to work on a particular program; the wrong here is Microsoft does this after having made the users dependent on Microsoft, because they are not free to ask anyone else to work on the program for them. which if that is the case, means the whole spiel at the beginning about non-free software not automatically being malware in the FSF's eyes pretty empty if "non-free software not supported forever" is malware.

rando289 11y ago
Nice pacemaker you have there, unfortunately, we've ceased supporting the software, and you are too old for a new one to be implanted, so it might break or get hacked and you'll die. How long would you expect us to support it?! And obviously we can't give away our intellectual property! https://www.softwarefreedom.org/news/2010/jul/21/software-defects-cardiac-medical-devices-are-life-/ https://www.softwarefreedom.org/news/2010/jul/21/software-de...
- johncolanduoni 11y ago
  Strawman much? Windows XP /= pacemaker. Just because I disagree with this line of reasoning for Windows XP, doesn't mean I do for critical medical equipment. Although XP is unfortunately used for some other medical equipment. However I think the problem there was using a consumer desktop operating system as an integral part of a medical device in the beginning.
  - rando289 11y ago
    Honestly I think hn, and generally internet commenting sucks because it's mostly all arguments. 1 person says something in a blog/article, 90% of top hn comments are criticism & counter argument, 95% of replies are arguments against the parent, on and on and on. It wasn't an argument that your comment was wrong, so it wasn't a strawman, it was just an example of something. And then you later go on to agree with me that should be supported because it's proprietary and no one else can support it is subjective and changes based on the use case, eg. medical equipment which runs xp.
- deleted 11y ago
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rando289 11y ago

Nice pacemaker you have there, unfortunately, we've ceased supporting the software, and you are too old for a new one to be implanted, so it might break or get hacked and you'll die. How long would you expect us to support it?! And obviously we can't give away our intellectual property! https://www.softwarefreedom.org/news/2010/jul/21/software-defects-cardiac-medical-devices-are-life-/ https://www.softwarefreedom.org/news/2010/jul/21/software-de...

johncolanduoni 11y ago
Strawman much? Windows XP /= pacemaker. Just because I disagree with this line of reasoning for Windows XP, doesn't mean I do for critical medical equipment. Although XP is unfortunately used for some other medical equipment. However I think the problem there was using a consumer desktop operating system as an integral part of a medical device in the beginning.
- rando289 11y ago
  Honestly I think hn, and generally internet commenting sucks because it's mostly all arguments. 1 person says something in a blog/article, 90% of top hn comments are criticism & counter argument, 95% of replies are arguments against the parent, on and on and on. It wasn't an argument that your comment was wrong, so it wasn't a strawman, it was just an example of something. And then you later go on to agree with me that should be supported because it's proprietary and no one else can support it is subjective and changes based on the use case, eg. medical equipment which runs xp.
deleted 11y ago
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