I don't understand why Apple can't just make the past few releases of OS X available to anyone who needs it. It's a free OS now, and it has tons of hardware che

I don't understand why Apple can't just make the past few releases of OS X available to anyone who needs it. It's a free OS now, and it has tons of hardware checks to prevent it from being run on non-Apple hardware. I don't understand their need to remove/hide the OS upgrades. I have to repair a friend's older MBP next week, and now I need to jump through hoops to get a legitimate installer. If you fall more than 1 version of OS X behind and they remove the previous upgrade, you're screwed from upgrading to the latest version. WHY, Apple?