Comment by tpmoney

I feel like all of this falls under "people don't want stuff to stay the same". Being online at all is a commitment to being in an ever changing environment, especially with respect to security and encryption. Fixing security vulnerabilities is declining to accept software as it is. Likewise, kernel support only matters if you're upgrading the hardware. To use an extreme example, you can (provided the hardware itself is still working) take a C64 from the 80's, plug it into the wall and use it as if it were 1984 all day long. Everything will work just fine. You might not be able to connect to any BBS anymore, but that isn't because the software required changes or maintenance to keep working, but because society itself changed and no one offers a C64 compatible dial-up BBS. To bring it to a physical analogy again, your 1950's encyclopedia set won't have anything to say about the internet or cellular technology, but that's not because your encyclopedia doesn't work any more, it's because the world around it has changed.