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.

Abandonware must be open sourced, publishing a new version doesn't count as a exception.

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

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.

Mandatory open source public domain release at EOS.

At Win10 EOS, people would make Windows distros, and ReactOS would no longer have to be a clean room implementation.

Also this would be a success for Stop Killing Games.

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.

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

"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.

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.

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 actually reasonable.

I have a ten year old laptop with an i7 processor, 16 GB RAM, and 1 TB SSD. It still does most things, I bought it for initially just fine. Granted this was one of the best laptops you could buy at the time.

Apple stopped supporting it with a current version of macOS a couple of years ago sadly. It’s still possible to patch newer versions to install and run on the old machine, but it’s a bit of a hassle.

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.

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.

No, Windows 11 added extra, unneeded hardware requirements.

Obsolete in this case actually means obsolete. Windows 11 literally blocks the update because you do not meet requirements, such as not having a TPM.

Technically, there are ways to bypass this, but not for a casual user (and it probably breaks some ToS)

You don't typically pay to run Linux distros. They're open-source. I can't imagine they'd be subject to this.

Would Linux even count since it’s foss?

I think it would need to be a commercial product like Red Hat or preinstalled OS by the company that sell the computer.
With a FOSS distribution that is made freely available without charge, that people download and install themselves, people are probably themselves responsible for their choice of OS.