Comment by andrekandre
15 hours ago
> Possibly some people rely on these devices and it adversely impact their joy and livelihood when support is ended.
This happens over and over again in tech.
its true and i agree with you as a user
on the other hand, some software gets harder and costlier to support the longer its out there (think spec changes, security issues, updates in law etc), and even paying a normal subscription for it can cause roi to go negative, especially when factoring in opportunity cost for a business (help the old users or spend that time/money making a new feature for the majority)
my thought on it is if its a subscription, maybe for some software, the longer someone uses the old version the subscription cost could go up slowly, or if its a one-time purchase, after x years they could just buy a support ticket or something...? for ad-supported software i have no ideas...
This reminds me of the time we needed to support IE6.
We only had to, because some buerocrats certified IE6 for some processes and did not bother to update with the real world that moved beyond that piece of garbage. So ... thanks for bringing back bad memories.
Gives me PTSD too!