[Development] Windows 7 support future removal

[André Pönitz]

On Mon, Aug 27, 2018 at 12:00:17AM -0700, Thiago Macieira wrote:
> On Sunday, 26 August 2018 23:39:03 PDT André Hartmann wrote:
> > Am 24.08.2018 um 10:58 schrieb André Pönitz:
> > > "Being out of support by Microsoft" seems to be for quite a few people
> > > a rather unimportant line of reasoning in comparison to having to submit
> > > to Windows 10-style forced system upgrades and snooping on user
> > > activities.
> > 
> > I couldn't agree you more.
> 
> I don't have a problem with that, so long as they never connect those 
> computers to the Internet after January 2020. That would be irresponsible.

Because of what?

Because Microsoft (or any OS vendor that's on the "newer is better" trip
for that matter) have scheduled the invention of the magic sauce that makes
their systems suddenly safe to use in public networks for December 2019?

Because hardware vendors have forsworn security-by-obscurity and suddenly
release their OS-and-a-half-on-a-chip-that-may-change-anything-the-user's-
-OS-does to public scrutiny?

Because there'll be World Peace and all the bad guys are gone?


I doubt either of that will happen.


"Realistically" (a term I colloquially use for "extrapolating from a number
of incidents in the past") we will see trading semi-working systems with a
certain number of known and an uncertain number of unknown deficiencies for
other systems with another uncertain number of the same of other, newer
unknown deficiencies.

This might look like an advantage to some, but it isn't in any metrics
that I am tempted to take seriously - *especially* when there are ways
to mitigate some of known deficiencies in a way that don't boil down
to "try to use a newer random version of what we sold you last year as
the best thing since sliced bread".

Andre'