This is more like a pharmaceutical company taking a financial hit to help in a sudden epidemic by giving out antidotes/vaccines for free, for the sake of public interest and the ecosystem.
Just because they had the vaccines ready in warehouses or could manufacture more easily doesn't mean that their customers "deserved" them for free before the epidemic hit.
If the customers actually desired security, they would've paid for XP/2003 patches or upgraded to a different supported OS. Those customers messed up on their own, and Microsoft is giving them an out here.
I agree with you broadly but your analogy is flawed because patches have zero marginal cost (once developed, code can be infinitely duplicated at no additional cost) whereas vaccines are physical entities and therefore giving one to somebody entails not giving that same item to somebody else. If Microsoft had already developed these patches why not distribute them widely, since it costs nothing to do so and takes nothing away from paying customers?
> Just because they had the vaccines ready in warehouses or could manufacture more easily doesn't mean that their customers "deserved" them for free before the epidemic hit.
Just because they had the vaccines ready in warehouses or could manufacture more easily doesn't mean that their customers "deserved" them for free before the epidemic hit.
If the customers actually desired security, they would've paid for XP/2003 patches or upgraded to a different supported OS. Those customers messed up on their own, and Microsoft is giving them an out here.