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Campaigners urge EU to mandate 15 years of OS updates
(www.theregister.com)
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this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2025
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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.
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
Solution: implement as consumer protection that only applies to paid OS's (and also ones that require a license, even if it's "free" due to coming with the hardware)
Then Microsoft makes windows free and monetizes the shit out of services in the OS.
Then people move to Linux