What about trying "planned obsolescence"? Hopefully every 5 years for production, and once a year for consumer. With this in mind, it is possible to plan ahead and allocate resources.
There will be a major update in xx.xx.20xx date, it will break many things, so plan accordingly. And there won't be any more security updates one month after that.
Meanwhile, security updates are pushed in realtime.
I think we should be striving for a 5+5 plan: you should expect feature updates for five years and security updates for ten years. More would be better - certainly for security updates, but these are the minimums we should be expecting.
Give the innovations a rest for a couple of years, and redevote the funds to security development. Hell, do that for four years! Many of us long-term users are held hostage by the fact that security updates (which we need) come bundled with this tosh.
I expect updates it to last one or two more years given their track record. And even when it stops for months, they always come back for emergency security updates.
In a world where the average hardware cycle is 1-2 years, the software cycle before obsoletion is 3-5, perpetual subscription is the only way. Software written today for consumer devices like iPhones and Android devices will break is 2-3 years if not maintained, and often much sooner than that.
It sucks. Gone are the days where you could buy Microsoft Office and run it for 10-15 years.
Next step should be mandatory software updates. For something like 7 years from initial sale. Which would allow 2 years of normal sale cycle and then at end 5 year of support.
I daresay people aren't going to like this answer but, you ultimately have to align the interests of the manufacturers and the consumers. Which probably means some sort of subscription model and even a requirement that the subscription be current to function.
I know. Yuck. But the only other real possibility is to legislate that such updates be made available for N years as part of the purchase conditions.
IMO if they have a point in time where they decide they will no longer provide security updates, they should adjust the MTBF calculation, setting the maximum possible lifetime to be the EOL on the software.
On the other hand, 4 more years is a lot, and they'll probably continue to release security updates for a year or two past 10's EOL (like they have with Windows 7).
Depends on which upgrades you are concerned about.
I agree that having new os versions supported for longer than 3-4 years would be good, but at least it looks like they will be supporting security updates for longer now, 6 years of security upgrades if I'm not mistaken.
But is it getting the maintenance necessary to be future-proof? Is it getting the updates/features/documentation/care first or is there some new better-loved more recommended, hyped solution?
Five years seems reasonable to me. The further out they get, the harder it gets for them to provide support—they're dependent on chipset vendors for up-to-date drivers.
I'll be interested to see what options there will be at the five-year mark: I'd guess that there would be options for non-official firmware.
There will be a major update in xx.xx.20xx date, it will break many things, so plan accordingly. And there won't be any more security updates one month after that.
Meanwhile, security updates are pushed in realtime.
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