16.05.2017, 05:03, "Georgi Guninski" <guninski@guninski.com>:
On Mon, May 15, 2017 at 05:00:01PM +0100, Ben Tasker wrote:
> That's what I've read. Microsoft provided patches in March for nominally > unsupported Windows versions with custom support contracts. The NHS, for > example, had dropped its XP support contract in ~2014. Cheap bastards ;) > > To be fair, it wasn't the NHS that dropped that contract, it was the Tory Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt. The NHS actually made a bit of noise about just how stupid it was at the time.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/05/16/microsoft_stockpiling_flaws_too/ Money talks
Custom support is a big earner: Microsoft charged Britain's National Health Service $200 per desktop for year one, $400 for year two and $800 for a third year as part of its contract. UK Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt cancelled the contract after a year as a cost-saving measure.
Custom support might well be a big earner for Microsoft but I don't think it's the main reason they 'hoard' patches for older software. Users would stay on old, outdated, software forever if they weren't given a strong incentive to upgrade. Hell, I have customers still running shit on Windows 95 who refuse to upgrade because of costs or software availability. Not only that but making it comfortable for users to stay on old systems is cumulative: more and more users choose not to upgrade because they will continue to be supported and the support costs to Microsoft go up with every single release (bandwidth isn't free, engineering time isn't free). Again, it makes sense to try to make it uncomfortable for users to upgrade. So yeah, I totally understand making it as uncomfortable and costly to lag behind as possible from both a security and financial standpoint.