[pawadu]

This comment makes my blood boil. Please ask yourself:

1. why would anybody want to keep 10.04 alive?

2. do you think the type of people who stubbornly continue to use 10.04 would know/care enough about security to seek an alternative source for security patches?

edit: should maybe add why this pisses me off: just logged into a production server running 12.04, default install apache and updates _turned off_. the owner looked confused (and slightly bored) when I explained the problem to him.

[EvanAnderson]

I don't particularly care why an organization would want to maintain a piece of software indefinitely. That's not my problem.

I do think that's important to recognize that there is model under which an organization can. I'd even argue that it's a more "free market" than that of single-source proprietary software, too. If there's a market in maintaining non-proprietary software someone will pop up to fill it (even if it's just a lone-wolf consultant). With proprietary software that can't happen.

Whether or not an organization or individual chooses to maintain software is an orthogonal concern to the model under which they maintain it. Even when there is a free market for maintenance some will opt to eschew maintenance. Personally, I'd like those organizations to pay the cost by way of data loss, downtime, going out of business, etc.

I'm not overly worried about it. I think traditional regulatory and risk management will eventually catch up. Someday (hopefully sooner, rather than alter) businesses won't be able to get basic insurance policies unless they can prove they're doing IT maintenance, for example.

[belorn]

Whatever hardware that is running that 12.04 system can be upgraded, free of charge, for likely the next 20 years if the past 20 years of linux is anything to go by.

Even if you pay money for the windows 10, it is unlikely to even start on the hardware that XP ran on. Not only will the people have to go through the budget to pay for the software, but now you need a full upgrade plan.

To put this in a concrete example. If a hospital had a check-in system running 12.04 they could just take someone internal from IT and go and fix it. If it was Windows XP then they need to go through finance, then get a offers from competing companies, fitting the upgrading into the budget, and last have people installing it in each of the hospitals entrances. The first case has a project length of days and the other of months and in worst case years.

[thecosas]

I understand the argument, but I think "just take someone internal from IT and go and fix it" is vastly oversimplifying the skills/manpower/time required for doing something like this.

[belorn]

I can only speak of my own experience as a sysadmin, but the more isolated the system is and the less critical it is for operation, the easier it is to delegate the job of doing a software update to coworkers and new hire. Especially if all the issues from doing an update has already been established on several other machines, in which case the update is more or less mechanical in nature.

It reminds me of the story about a thirty year old Commodore Amiga running the AC system for a school district. The district finally decided to modernize the AC for $2 million, but until then it was just cheaper and easier to continue paying a person to run it every year. Replacing hardware systems is expensive and political complicated, while continuing paying an employee is just status quo.

[thomastjeffery]

> why would anybody want to keep 10.04 alive?

> Assuming these hospitals keep updating and do not get stuck at Ubuntu 10.04.

It's that simple.

If someone wants to continue using outdated software, they will want to keep supporting it. Free software lets them do that. Proprietary software specifically forbids it.

[bigbugbag]

Why would anyone use ubuntu for critical operations in the first place ? AFAIK it's Red Hat or Debian.

[kagamine]

I think you missed the point being made by the person you replied to. The only 10.04 install you should encounter exists due to ignorance and not due to upgrade cost as with a non-open OS. XP/Vista/7/8/10 don't get upgraded due to them being proprietary and having a single point of support (concerning OS level exploits).

So, 1. because there is a community outside of a major corp who are active, so it isn't a burden on Canonical. 2. yes? see 1.

Should any IT professional not have upgraded from 10.04? No. It's free to upgrade, unlike Win which, remember, isn't a single upgrade, licensing is per user.

[pawadu]

You too are missing the point. The same people who didn't upgrade from 10.04 would probably also not take advantage of the Microsofts offer to upgrade to win10 free of charge, because <reasons>.

I am so happy that win10 patches are mandatory despite all the whining. In fact, I want them to take it one step further and adopt the ChromeOS update model.