5 ms·

Budgets will find room for an update when an out of date OS starts causing damage to the business. Patching an ancient OS is enabling the delay of updates with

Budgets will find room for an update when an out of date OS starts causing damage to the business. Patching an ancient OS is enabling the delay of updates with the excuse "Whats the point, it still works"

vkou 7y ago
I've worked at a company where the build server was full of viruses, because devs kept spinning up unpatched XP VMs, who would inevitably get Conficker, and whatever other shit was hanging around on our intranet. Nobody gave a shit about it. And this wasn't some crazy seat-of-the pants startup. It was a mature software company, employing >40 engineers (in that division alone), that had been building, and selling software for many, many years.
- egorfine 7y ago
  I have had a VM server like that. About a dozen Windows images each launched from a known good snapshot for the test suite to run. Afterwards VM is killed and reverted back to the snapshot. Viruses? Couldn't care less. The whole lifecycle of the VM was like 40 minutes.
  - vkou 7y ago
    40 minutes of an unpatched computer on that network was 35 minutes too long. We'd also develop inside VMs. That is, we'd install Visual Studio, our product, Seapine source control...
Carpetsmoker 7y ago
There are reasons there is no budget. A budget doesn't magically appear. Take health care, education, or police services for example. Do you really want to take away resources from providing the stuff that's actually needed just for some artificial easily preventable crisis? The entire situation is ridiculous really. So what that XP is "ancient"? For many purposes it works just fine. The only reason this situation exists is because people can't fix their own computers. The entire thing is a massive waste of resources.
- selestify 7y ago
  Is it really Microsoft's responsibility to keep patching XP forever?
  - Carpetsmoker 7y ago
    Hot take: but yes, it is. They sold the software and they are preventing anyone else from patching XP. I think that by doing so they have responsibility. If they don't want it then that's okay: just allow other people to patch XP. The situation where I'm not able (or even legally allowed!) to patch my own computer system is pretty ridiculous. I'm not massively in to "Free Software" or the "four essential freedoms", but I do think people should have the freedom to fix software they bought ("right to repair"). I know how it works, I don't "buy" Windows, I buy a license to allow using it. I think is legal shenanigans and doesn't (or rather, shouldn't) really matter. The entire thing is just a colossal waste of resources. Many organisations would be perfectly happy with XP, because a basic stable OS without too much fancy stuff is all they need, and XP offers that. It's not an "upgrade", it's just "replacing a working system with another working system".
    - zip1234 7y ago
      Except part of an OS is security. Just like you wouldn't keep an old skeleton key on the front door of your business because of the risk of someone breaking in, you may feel it isn't worth the risk to use an old OS that has an obsolete security model.
      - Silhouette 7y ago
        The flip side of this is that there has to be an acceptable newer replacement with a better security model. For a lot of Windows 7 users, Microsoft have yet to offer that. (I imagine this is going to cause quite a stir if Microsoft try to stick to their published EOL date for Windows 7 next year, given that still nearly half of Windows users are using it.)
        7y ago
growtofill 7y ago
What you create today creates a liability for tomorrow. Maybe they wouldn’t have to do this if Windows 7/10 were free updates with a smooth upgrade experience?
la_barba 7y ago
> "Whats the point, it still works" And you're claiming that, it working, is not a legitimate reason to keep using it?

vkou 7y ago

I've worked at a company where the build server was full of viruses, because devs kept spinning up unpatched XP VMs, who would inevitably get Conficker, and whatever other shit was hanging around on our intranet. Nobody gave a shit about it. And this wasn't some crazy seat-of-the pants startup. It was a mature software company, employing >40 engineers (in that division alone), that had been building, and selling software for many, many years.

egorfine 7y ago
I have had a VM server like that. About a dozen Windows images each launched from a known good snapshot for the test suite to run. Afterwards VM is killed and reverted back to the snapshot. Viruses? Couldn't care less. The whole lifecycle of the VM was like 40 minutes.
- vkou 7y ago
  40 minutes of an unpatched computer on that network was 35 minutes too long. We'd also develop inside VMs. That is, we'd install Visual Studio, our product, Seapine source control...

Carpetsmoker 7y ago

There are reasons there is no budget. A budget doesn't magically appear. Take health care, education, or police services for example. Do you really want to take away resources from providing the stuff that's actually needed just for some artificial easily preventable crisis? The entire situation is ridiculous really. So what that XP is "ancient"? For many purposes it works just fine. The only reason this situation exists is because people can't fix their own computers. The entire thing is a massive waste of resources.

selestify 7y ago
Is it really Microsoft's responsibility to keep patching XP forever?
- Carpetsmoker 7y ago
  Hot take: but yes, it is. They sold the software and they are preventing anyone else from patching XP. I think that by doing so they have responsibility. If they don't want it then that's okay: just allow other people to patch XP. The situation where I'm not able (or even legally allowed!) to patch my own computer system is pretty ridiculous. I'm not massively in to "Free Software" or the "four essential freedoms", but I do think people should have the freedom to fix software they bought ("right to repair"). I know how it works, I don't "buy" Windows, I buy a license to allow using it. I think is legal shenanigans and doesn't (or rather, shouldn't) really matter. The entire thing is just a colossal waste of resources. Many organisations would be perfectly happy with XP, because a basic stable OS without too much fancy stuff is all they need, and XP offers that. It's not an "upgrade", it's just "replacing a working system with another working system".
  - zip1234 7y ago
    Except part of an OS is security. Just like you wouldn't keep an old skeleton key on the front door of your business because of the risk of someone breaking in, you may feel it isn't worth the risk to use an old OS that has an obsolete security model.
    - Silhouette 7y ago
      The flip side of this is that there has to be an acceptable newer replacement with a better security model. For a lot of Windows 7 users, Microsoft have yet to offer that. (I imagine this is going to cause quite a stir if Microsoft try to stick to their published EOL date for Windows 7 next year, given that still nearly half of Windows users are using it.)
      - 7y ago

growtofill 7y ago

What you create today creates a liability for tomorrow. Maybe they wouldn’t have to do this if Windows 7/10 were free updates with a smooth upgrade experience?

la_barba 7y ago

> "Whats the point, it still works" And you're claiming that, it working, is not a legitimate reason to keep using it?