The article talks about selling on hardware even once it's declared end of life and the article also gave the 9000 series as an example of hardware that require

The article talks about selling on hardware even once it's declared end of life and the article also gave the 9000 series as an example of hardware that requires a license. I assumed there was something similar going on already with the 9000's predecessor (the 8000?). I didn't mean to imply that the 9000 is already eol. It must be hell for these guys when they hit a show-stopper in old sw and they have no access to the fixed sw for their old hw.