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Comment by jackmaney | Hacker News Reader

No software company is--or should be--obliged to support a product until the end of time.

Civil engineering seems like a decent analogy for this. People make buildings. There's a chance they could be around for hundreds of years, but the original engineering firm does not have to provide maintenance.

If MS isn't going to issue patches, there ought to be some way for someone else to be contracted to. Buildings are essentially open source so that is easy to do. Software isn't necessarily.

And much of the time you tear down a building that is no longer useful or meets your standards. Even though some people may like the building, the building owner can do as they want with it.

That gets the crux of ownership - is MS selling a revocable license?

Just because they're not supporting it doesn't mean you don't own it. As you said, the CE that designed it doesn't need to maintain it, and your license for the design of the building limits your ability to modify the building.

My point was that most buildings aren't kept around forever either, as you were implying.

> your license for the design of the building limits your ability to modify the building

How?

That is a bad analogy. Unlike software, building take time, people and material resources to build and cost magnitudes more, yet windows can be installed/upgraded in an hour.

Microsoft already issued a patch( not that they didn't support XP a long time over its lifespan ), it is called Windows 7, Apple does this as well, with their yearly OS releases, even though in a more clever way.

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