I'm surprised a manufacturer of such engineering machines hasn't differentiated itself by offering a SLA on driver (and general software) availability for future operating system versions. It would be reasonable to require users to pay a subscription fee for extended support. I'd think the resale value of machines with drivers still available would be much higher than for those without and that this eventually would allow the manufacturer to charge a premium price for the machine at initial sale.

I own a Fujitsu Scansnap s1500. It's out of support, and the existing drivers are incompatible with Catalina. I now must pay a 3rd party $100 for drivers or fiddle around with a Linux scanner server or similar. Never again will I pay $400 for a Fujitsu scanner, that's for sure.