Hacker News Reader

Comment by marcusb | Hacker News Reader

> Microsoft has a long history of playing fast-and-loose with the truth. And that’s again the case with Windows 10 coming to its supposed “end of life” this fall.

I can’t take an article seriously, whatever merits it might have, if this is the opening gambit.

“End of life” is a fairly common term of art amongst software and hardware OEMs. Windows 10 is going to be end of life. No scare quotes needed.

View on HN

But in 2015:

Microsoft announced at its Ignite conference this week that Windows 10 will be the last version of Windows. Microsoft has no plans to let Windows 10 become stale. On the contrary, it plans to keep Windows evolving with regular improvements and updates.

That’s not what the quote says

This probably refers to the fact that Windows XP still has support contracts. Microsoft commonly calls their software EOL and then supports it for 5+ years. I don't think that's a bad thing, but they tend to use it more as a marketing term than a true hard line where security fixes stop going out.

Also, If I remember correctly, the originally announced end of life for Windows XP was extended because too many people were still running it when the date came. (I think they even extended it more than once)

The funniest thing about this is that any major security indicent with Windows 10 after EOL would obviously get fixed by Microsoft because it would be so existentially terrible for them to point to the fine print and ignore it. But you can't stop outrage journalism.

So the piece is right: it's not actually end of life.

No. If a vendor says “we aren’t going to support this product after X date - don’t call, don’t write”, that’s EoL.

Doesn’t matter if they do one off fixes because they decide that’s the right thing to do - product is still EoL. You won’t get support if, say, Word crashes due to a core library bug. You can’t rely on them doing regular testing. EoL.

Doesn’t matter if the DoD comes to some ridiculously expensive bespoke support arrangement - still EoL. You could probably offer them enough money to provide a support contract for MSDOS 1.0, but that’s still EoL for everyone else and in general.

>Doesn’t matter if they do one off fixes because they decide that’s the right thing to do - product is still EoL. You won’t get support if, say, Word crashes due to a core library bug

You don't get that under regular contracts either. There are tons of bugs, including crashing ones going back decades.

EOL either means "no more fixes period" or means nothing.

> You don't get that under regular contracts either.

Absolutely false. Of course vendors sometimes mark things WONTFIX, but Microsoft regularly produces bugfixes for supported products based on issues identified in support cases... As does every other reputable software vendor.

> EOL either means "no more fixes period" or means nothing.

Well, I disagree. Can you call in and get support with a support contract? Can you get a support contract without a one-off negotiation? Does the vendor regularly produce bug fixes -- not just emergency security fixes to allay a PR disaster -- for the product? No to all three? EoL.

Most important of all, has the vendor signaled that they will not support the product after X date and therefore a customer without a bespoke contract cannot rely on said support? EoL.

It's ending, it's a good idea to work towards upgrading, but yeah there's no one magic date after which a wall collapses and viruses waiting outside your computer rush in.

The worse an outcome with an outdated product the more the vendor has to support it because it would harm them to let any version of their product become synonymous with security risk.

... Hence the scare quotes

No Windows ever has real EOL.

And this is such a minor point to refuse to take an article seriously, one might as well refuse the theory of relativity paper because Einstein had some mispelling.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com