3 ms·
I imagine Microsoft gets a dump truck full of cash to open support up on XP like this. I wonder who paid?
by EdSharkey 9y ago
I imagine Microsoft gets a dump truck full of cash to open support up on XP like this. I wonder who paid?
- TAForObvReasons 9y agoUS pours tens of billions of dollars into legacy technologies: http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-16-696T http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-16-696T -- no doubt a large portion of that made its way to Microsoft
- ocdtrekkie 9y agoWell, the US government's already paying them to maintain XP to begin with. So the patches already exist internally at Microsoft, and it costs them nothing if they just decide "Hey, this patch is such a big deal, we also want to let everyone else have it". Isn't really gonna change the fact that the US government's still paying them for the work. And computer security benefits from herd immunity tactics, so it's best to get virus updates in as many hands as possible. It's why Microsoft has never really prevented pirated copies of Windows from getting security updates. They benefit from not having old machines potentially causing problems for newer ones, and even just avoiding the bad PR from massive malware attacks.
- daxfohl 9y agoFor that matter the government may well be dictating the patch release schedule too. And certainly the skeptical among us can wonder what else may be in these patches.