Should OS makers, like Microsoft, be legally required to provide 15 years of security updates?
This comes after e-waste watchers revealed that 75 million iPhones could be rendered obsolete – tipping the scales at around 1.2 million kilograms of e-waste – following the release of iOS 26.
Not strictly true because the phones they counted here will still get security updates for 2-3 years AFAIK. 7 year old phones, mind you. But yeah, no more feature updates. Which are so meaningless these days anyway.
No, OS makers should just not make their OS bloated with useless shit, stealing your data and have arbitrary system requirements. I think 15 years of OS updates is excessive unless we’re talking about servers or very specific workflows. IMO 5-10 years is enough.
That said, for some operating systems it doesn’t even make sense to support for THAT long, because how they are designed (A lot of Linux distros for example). It turns out, if you don’t break users’ workflow, they don’t mind to upgrade.
15 years is too long, it doesn’t match the state of the industry or technological progress.
If anything this slows down innovation which leads me to suspect the 15 year idea was though of by someone who dislikes any technical changes.
Or an established player in the market that wants to keep competitors out (but I guess in a way that is someone who dislikes change). While legislation like this can sometimes be great (e.g. the recent changes forcing longer support for mobile phones) there comes a point where it cuts the other way and it becomes an entry barrier.
Imo the better solution would be to legislate what happens after support ends. Like forcing the disclosure of at least some documentation that allows others to continue servicing the product or at least transfer out data and install other software on the device.
Fair like imagine if Microsoft was forced to support windows 8 for 15 years, a operating system people barely use, also some OSs arnt ran by huge companys
Before Microsoft demanded TPM 2.0, you could install the latest version of Windows on extremely old hardware. Easily reaching that 15 years. We had this already. And Windows 11 can easily run without TPM 2.0. Microsoft just has business reasons to demand it. So I don’t see how innovation is slowed down by this.
No. Maintain your own OS. Any country or group of countries should be doing so.
That sounds like an insane duration, even LTS distros are not usually anything like 15 years
this isn’t about the age of the OS, it’s the age of the device. I can install linux on a device from 20 years ago if not more.
Ahh, so the win11 arbitrary hardware requirements bullshit
I don’t know. just the other day somebody on lemmy was asking about installing a 32bit linux distro on an old netbook and the majority of comments were discussing whether there was any practical reason for distros to continue 32-bit support.
That’s unfortunate, but still leaves you 20 years worth of devices if they drop 32-bit.
They didn’t say you could not do version upgrade…
yeah but you don’t pay 150euros for it + all the ads and stuffs
but yeah, I don’t see the point of this, it’s clearly aimed at Microsoft, and at this point alternative solutions exist
I almost feel like the compromise we will eventually land on is that if an OS maker like Microsoft wants to continue advertising on your OS they have to take some liability for its security.
15 is an arbitrarily long time. I think forcing it to be open sourced upon the companies end of life is the better option
Then you can have a company that acquires the original failed company and provides “support” in the form of one bugfix per year.
All of these solutions are gamable except for requiring that the solution be open source from the get-go.
Or legislate that unsupported software becomes public domain or is open for development and the public can try and make the updates themselves.
Forcing people to upgrade entirely depends on the nature of the upgrades and the motive of the company. What we need is competition so there are alternatives for people to use if they don’t want to upgrade. But somehow Microsoft is not considered the monopoly of the PC OS market, despite being a monopoly, and uses that position to force changes nobody wants but them, like turning window into an AI data farming scheme that violates user privacy.
Dude, I’m so ready. Linux supports processors that old, by enthusiasts for free.
This would almost certainly rule out Linux as an option. What Linux vendor feels comfortable committing to something, anything, for 15 years?
If the EU is going to pay for the developers, sure. I’d even go higher and say make it 50 years. Otherwise make your own OS or use Linux.
I would prefer if they force the companies to unlock root and boot-loader, when they not ship security updates anymore for a device.
I’d add the hardware drivers must be open sourced at the end of support as well, and no drm, patent, reverse engineering legal protections for a out of support Device/chipset
Fuck it. Force them from release date. There’s no reason for them to dictate what you can and cannot run on the hardware you purchase. If they can’t compete by providing a better OS or software, and must rely on anti-competitive models to profit, then they don’t deserve to waste the planets resources.
Fair enough, just thought proposal above would have higher chances to get approved 😇
You start high and negotiate down. If you start low, you’ll get even less
Abandonware must be open sourced, publishing a new version doesn’t count as a exception.
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Just require any new operating systems to support 15 year old hardware. We should require manufacturers to provide 15 years of UEFI and firmware updates too.
That is way more sensible, than the other way around.
What we REALLY need is to curb microsoft’s market dominance. If more alternatives for OS and usable replacements for MS office em would exist, this would not be a problem and would not need to hamper innovation for the sake of back porting (the main counter-argument as a dev).
Linux and all its flavors?
What’s wrong with libreoffice or anyoffice? For a large percentage of users, Linux is fine, especially as many applications have an online option. For the stuff I do, in Linux, online Office is more than sufficient.
An org I work with provides me with a 365 license, but I I’m more comfortable in Libreoffice.
Office is used bythe majority, but majority doesn’t mean they are right, they are simply more.
The jank oh my god the jank
Windows is far more jank than a lot of Linux distros/desktop environments.
Like…
- Multiple different right click menus?
- No consistent and cohesive design language even throughout system or first party apps?
- Having to search online for an exe download page, download, open downloads folder, double click, click next through an installer?
- Updates that happen when you don’t want them to, take forever, and break things?
- Fucking ads everywhere?
- Web results in your start menu before actual stuff on your system
- Multiple settings apps?
- Sleep that doesn’t work?
- Convoluted process for setting things as the default app?
- Dark mode that’s only functional for some apps?
It’s actually incredible how much money Microsoft has, and how much more they spend than probably all Linux DEs combined, but they’ve still yet to fix so much low hanging fruit.
I have had more issues with formatting between ms 365 desktop and ms 365 online than I’ve had with libreoffice
Hmmm, I don’t agree. The trend is in the opposite direction. Microsoft Windows used to have a larger market share and supported hardware indefinitely. Now that their market share has shrunk, they are also limiting support for older hardware. This only shows correlation, not causation, but it does show that more competition has not improved the issue and that we need laws to do that instead. MacOS, the primary competitor to Microsoft Windows which also has Microsoft Office available, only supports their hardware for 6-8 years as well.
Edit: just to add, if anything, this actually shows that more competition and reduced market share probably increases the pressure to cut support for older hardware because it probably becomes less profitable to do so.
Nothing says ‘circular economy’ like Microsoft stranding 400 million PCs
This might be a silly question but would this not be a good idea for a start up company that recycle computer parts?
would this not be a good idea for a start up company that recycle computer parts?
I really don’t think so. Computer recycling already seems to be a low profit business, as evidenced by there not being any large companies that do it (that I’m aware of). This number of computers flooding the market would probably make it even less profitable. Sure, it may be profitable for some small businesses, but nothing on the scale required to address the problem.
Don’t manufacturers purposefuly destroy the computers and such just to ensure that doesn’t happen?
No. Manufacturers have no say in what happens to computer hardware after is sold.
Some companies may destroy the hard drives to make sure no data gets out. Some companies will remove the memory as well.
that’s what the greatest technician that’s ever lived does.
There are dozens of us out here patiently awaiting a bunch of reasonably powerful new Linux machines.
This is stupid.
15 years is a massive time to just update your OS.
15 years ago instagram didn’t exist, the iPad was new, and people were just updating from Vista to Windows 7. I think Hadoop was just created then.
That is a massive amount of time to support software that would have almost no architectural protection against things like heartbleed.
Instagram has existed for 14 years and 11 months. I think you might be pushing it on the not 15 years.
But more importantly though, Windows XP was supported for 18 years…
So it’s not like it can’t be done.
Windows used to support really old hardware, I believe more than 15 years old until they introduced the new requirements for particular CPU models and TPM 2.0 chips. If anything, I feel that 15 years is too short. iPads and Hadoop have nothing to do with PC hardware.
"Microsoft’s decision to end support for Windows 10 could make 400 million computers obsolete
This is more stupid, and I absolutely agree with the article it shouldn’t be legal to end support of an OS this quickly, mind you this is not update to a new OS, like is common on phones, but mostly security updates for the OS you purchased with the device.
I absolutely think 10 years should be a minimum, but for PC, I can easily see an argument for 15 years, as many systems are purpose built, and should keep working even if an OS is discontinued.A similar argument can be made for phones, but maybe that should just be 10 or maybe even just 5 years, which very few phones have. My vote is on 10 years, because what some companies have been doing for a long time, only supporting security updates for 3 years is not acceptable IMO. If the phone is free to install custom ROM unhindered, I would be more understanding, but phones are generally locked, potentially rendering them worthless if updates are not available.
I think I’d prefer if there was a minimum updates guarantee that OS sellers would have to disclose, but even then I’m more in favour of other companies being able to pick up the work by making sure devices have their bootloader unlockable after they don’t get any more updates for X amount of time, rather than add burden to OS makers, because forcing people to support a project for Y amount of years would really harm indie developers releasing Linux distros and the like
rather than add burden to OS makers
It’s not a burden for the OS maker, except when the OS is the product, and in that case it’s only fair.
With Android the phone maker adapt the OS to their phones and flavor of Android, if they can’t handle maintaining it, they can use vanilla. Google is the OS maker, and I think they can handle the burden.The EU has been so far bad at making sure FOSS isn’t seen as a paid product in the eyes of regulation, even in cases where it’s clearly unpaid, see here. They can’t be trusted to get this differentiation right.
Therefore, unlockable bootloader seems like the better idea. Get people to Linux and open Android variants if the closed-source companies won’t serve them.
I have no idea what I’m supposed to see from you link? I don’t see any particular legal knowledge, or description of any particular legal consequences, and I have no idea what the point is???
Obviously software provided for free “as is”, cannot be required to be maintained. And if it is owned by the public which is the case with FOSS, there is no “owner” who can be made responsible.If however the software is part of a commercial package, the one supplying the package has responsibility for the package supplied, you can’t just supply open source software as part of a commercial product, and waive all responsibility for your product in that regard.
I admit it’s a complex topic, but if you read the post in detail, it should answer your questions. The “owner” is typically the maintainer, if in doubt that’s the person with repository write access. And the EU can apparently potentially require whatever to be maintained, not that I understand the exact details. The point was that the regulation doesn’t seem to avoid FOSS fallout well.
“owner” is typically the maintainer,
Nope, AFAIK that is not legally applicable, that is very clear with licenses like MIT BSD etc, and for GPL in all versions it’s very explicitly stated in the license.
You can also release as simply public domain, which very obviously means nobody owns as it is owned by everybody.
Generally if you give something away for free, you can’t be claimed to be the owner.
I have no idea where that idea should come from, some typical anti EU alarmists maybe? And I bet there is zero legal precedent for that. And I seriously doubt any lawyer would support your claim.If however you choose a license where the creator keeps ownership it may be different, but then it’s not FOSS.
My ThinkPad x230 will soon turn 13 (since it was manufactured, I picked it up second hand from a business that went bankrupt). It’s still alive and kicking, just not with Windows. The hardware is dated, but for what I do it’s good enough. I only replaced the battery and the screen. I don’t care for instagram or any of that crap, this machine chugged along for 13 years, it will chug at least for another 5. Don’t let hardware manufacturers normalize dunking perfectly capable good hardware into a landfill because it hurts their profits. If you need any further proof just look into the old Apple hardware modding and some of the stuff they pulled off.
15 years is a massive time to just update your OS.
The last version of Windows 10 (22H2) is nothing like the RTM release from 2015 (1507). 1507 still has Cortana and their failed “Continuum” concept.
Essentially we are asking Microsoft to support Windows 10 22H2 for another ~5 years, which is reasonable considering 22H2 is a just under 3 years old.
And yet people are bitching because Windows 10 is getting cut off after 10 years of support. Raise it to 15 and people will just bitch at the 15 year mark.
I think major factors in people bitching about the Windows 10 EOL is that a) Windows 10 was explicitly marketed as the final version of Windows and b) Windows 11 is so unappealing that even companies are reluctant to upgrade.
Normally, that wouldn’t be a big problem. We had dud releases before. Windows Vista had few friends due to compatibility issues but was workable. Besides, 7 was launched shortly after Vista’s EOL. Likewise, Windows 8’s absurd UI choices made it deeply unpopular but it was quickly followed by 8.1, which fixed that. And Windows 10 again followed shortly after 8’s EOL (and well before 8.1’s).
Windows 11, however, combines a hard to justify spec hike with a complete absence of appealing new features. The notable new features that are there are raising concerns about data safety. In certain industries (e.g. medical, legal, and finance), Recall/Copilot Vision is seen as dangerous as it might access protected information and is not under the same control that the company has over its document stores. That increases the vector for a data breach that could lead to severe legal and reputational penalties.
Microsoft failed to satisfyingly address these concerns. And there’s not even hope of a new version of Windows releasing a few months after 10’s EOL; Windows 12 hasn’t even been announced yet.
It’s no wonder that companies are now complaining about Windows 10’s support window being too short.
Of course. Make another regulation only big corps can follow. To punish them, of course. This is punishment.
