> That's a nice thought but in practice it's infeasible to keep different branches for different UI/feature sets around in perpetuity. They have been doing exa

> That's a nice thought but in practice it's infeasible to keep different branches for different UI/feature sets around in perpetuity. They have been doing exactly that since Windows 98. Windows Update used to only auto install security/bug patches and features were optional installs. Microsoft also has an entire line of POSReady/WEI that gets only critical security fixes with zero other changes. This version of Windows is what runs on ATMs and self checkout machines.