I believe the phrase "if it isn't broken, does fix it" is at play here.
A lot of drivers were developed back in the '90s and just tweaked for compatibility when absolutely necessary. Long-term compatibility is also why that world tends to favour Microsoft, that's one thing Redmond really cares about.
Then why is the Navy on XP?
>other hipster stuff
I've heard security called many things, but I think this is the first time I've heard of it referred to as 'hipster stuff'.
Because it's likely that a lot of their equipment was actually developed for Win95/98/2000 or even DOS.
> I've heard security called many things, but I think this is the first time I've heard of it referred to as 'hipster stuff'.
It was tongue-in-cheek, but what I meant is that most people don't upgrade their OS for fun (or for security) -- they do it only when forced by external pressure. Dunno about you, but I'd rather have nuclear submarines running on well-known and (literally) battle-tested software, screw smooth animations and glassy windows.
But perhaps i'm missing your point about RH?
a) throw away a $300,000 piece of equipment for lack of drivers, assuming the company producing it has disappeared without all trace
or
b) spending less than $300,000 on employee time to make it work again
then to me case b sounds preferable, even in efficiency-first organisations. The military, i don't know. All i'm saying is that b wouldn't even be feasible without stuff being Libre, so diatribe or not, it actually would benefit public, private and commercial users' interests.
Anyway, probably i'm too optimistic about things.
I had a customer who this day has a distributed system running Windows NT4 on Alpha for s critical business system. It was cheaper to setup a dedicated network then to deal with the application. IIRC, they now have a 5 year project to replace it that is just starting.