[jxn]

> You can pay someone else to isolate and secure your XP installation as well (for the minimum amount of stuff you need in there). Put it in a VM, behind a firewall, secure it, prevent unknown services from running in it, etc.

Of course, you can also pay someone to do the same for a free software OS. You might even have more options for safely isolating it. I suspect the main point is that you have options, e.g. you don't simply have to isolate it (that may not work depending on how you use the software), you could also maintain / fork it.

In theory, with enough money, I'm sure you could also pay MS to maintain it for you or (as I've seen done once or twice in the business world) simply buy out the company and have them support it, but it seems like the cash barrier required to getting those things done could be lower than self-supporting the software in many circumstances.

[raverbashing]

> you could also maintain / fork it

That's true. However, for the majority of cases, it's not worth it.

You theoretically could have an old version of Red Hat running and then self-support there, but I believe the answer is probably something similar to what would be done with Windows XP. Even if what you need to run there is Free Software. Easier and probably more feasible, true. Still, very unlikely.

The last option you pointed out is a possibility as well and it happens, however it's usually a way of throwing a lot of money for very little gain