If that's done then there's at least still the option of trying a more recent version of the library, and if THAT breaks paying someone to write a compatibility

If that's done then there's at least still the option of trying a more recent version of the library, and if THAT breaks paying someone to write a compatibility wrapper for it. It would still cost money, but at least there's a legal path forward. Better still would be having a device that operates on some commodity connectivity using standard protocols (APIs/etc) which can be soft-gaped by a firewall / guard that only lets well formed (or at least expressly authorized) requests in. The open source OSes do go extremely out of their way to provide and keep userland APIs stable, in many cases modern hardware that would be completely unsupported in XP or some other proprietary OS, and again, if something that used to be depended on somehow falls out of support you're at least actually free to pay someone to add in the support you need.