Campaigners urge EU to mandate 15 years of OS updates
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Linux and all its flavors?
What’s wrong with libreoffice or anyoffice? For a large percentage of users, Linux is fine, especially as many applications have an online option. For the stuff I do, in Linux, online Office is more than sufficient.
An org I work with provides me with a 365 license, but I I’m more comfortable in Libreoffice.
Office is used bythe majority, but majority doesn’t mean they are right, they are simply more.
LibreOffice is okay for some stuff, but shows its limitations pretty quickly once you use it for more serious tasks.
- Writer is the best of the suite and has deleted comments for me several times without ability to recover.
- The spreadsheet is a toy compared to Excel spreadsheets used in pretty much any business.
- The presentation software produces ugly results by default.
The only things LibreOffice has going for it, is the price and that the UI doesn’t change. LibreOffice has no good mobile apps.
Better alternatives to Microsoft Office are Google Docs etc. and Apple’s iWork suite. Both have good compatibility with Microsoft’s files and run great on mobile.
Google has ease of use, easy sharing and collaboration. Apple’s iWork has great usability and features and produces beautiful results by default. The suite comes free with every Apple device. Google Docs is free to use as well.
That’s of course ignoring the workhorse called Outlook. You can kind of approach its features with a handful of other applications, but won’t reach the same functionality.
LibreOffice has one unique application in its suite: Base local database. Microsoft Access and FileMaker used to very popular, but faded into the background over the last decade.
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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.
But unlike server aided services an OS still keeps working. You can use that PC for 10 more years, if you like.
I think there’s a discrepancy in the understanding of ‘support’ and what it entails in different technology fields.
Demanding to receive NEW features for decades is not feasible in the current economic environment. -
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=OJ%3AL_202402847
Supply in the course of a commercial activity might be characterised not only by charging a price for a product with digital elements, but also by charging a price for technical support services where this does not serve only the recuperation of actual costs, by an intention to monetise, for instance by providing a software platform through which the manufacturer monetises other services, by requiring as a condition for use the processing of personal data for reasons other than exclusively for improving the security, compatibility or interoperability of the software, or by accepting donations exceeding the costs associated with the design, development and provision of a product with digital elements
TL;DR, just donations can already be a problem, apparently. But IANAL.
but also by charging a price for technical support
Which exactly includes systems like RedHat which I already included, but in no way includes voluntary FOSS work for free.
an intention to monetise
Again it’s very much about the money, and being non free both as in beer and in freedom.
just donations can already be a problem, apparently. But IANAL.
NOPE!!!
Donations are not a charge. A donation is as the word says a donation typically to support a voluntary effort or an organization working for the common good in some way.
A donation does not require anything in return.Why are you making scaremongering arguments from ignorance?
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But unlike server aided services an OS still keeps working. You can use that PC for 10 more years, if you like.
I think there’s a discrepancy in the understanding of ‘support’ and what it entails in different technology fields.
Demanding to receive NEW features for decades is not feasible in the current economic environment.The biggest issue is security updates and a current internet browser.
Of course I can use a 30 year old computer that still works with the software it can run.
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Should OS makers, like Microsoft, be legally required to provide 15 years of security updates?
I have no sympathy for anyone using microsoft products.
They made their bed, now they get to sleep in it.
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15 years is too long, it doesn’t match the state of the industry or technological progress.
If anything this slows down innovation which leads me to suspect the 15 year idea was though of by someone who dislikes any technical changes.
Pretty sure Rocky Linux provides updates for 10 years.
It’s not asking too much for multi-billion dollar corporations to provide 15 years of updates.
They have more than enough resources.
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That sounds like an insane duration, even LTS distros are not usually anything like 15 years
These multi-billion dollar corporations have more than enough resources to provide updates for 15 years.
There’s nothing insane about it, unless you’ve been conditioned to live vicariously through business owners.
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This would almost certainly rule out Linux as an option. What Linux vendor feels comfortable committing to something, anything, for 15 years?
Because Linux is free software, we can implement the fixes ourselves.
Doing so with Windows or Crapple would literally be illegal.
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Of course. Make another regulation only big corps can follow. To punish them, of course. This is punishment.
Good.
If we’re going to pretend corporations are people, then we should treat them like slaves.
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These multi-billion dollar corporations have more than enough resources to provide updates for 15 years.
There’s nothing insane about it, unless you’ve been conditioned to live vicariously through business owners.
Pretty sure postmarketOS isn’t made by a multi-billion dollar corporation. Such a requirement would mean ONLY multi-billion dollar corporations can release an operating system. You do not want to give them that power.
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Pretty sure postmarketOS isn’t made by a multi-billion dollar corporation. Such a requirement would mean ONLY multi-billion dollar corporations can release an operating system. You do not want to give them that power.
If it’s free software, then anyone can implement the fixes themselves.
Doing so with proprietary software would be illegal.
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You don’t typically pay to run Linux distros. They’re open-source. I can’t imagine they’d be subject to this.
Upgrades are more seamless as well, it’s definitely a bit more blurry of a process. Plus Ubuntu releases twice a year, so their versions are more like the equivalent of Microsoft’s service packs (or whatever they call them now) but on a rolling basis.
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but also by charging a price for technical support
Which exactly includes systems like RedHat which I already included, but in no way includes voluntary FOSS work for free.
an intention to monetise
Again it’s very much about the money, and being non free both as in beer and in freedom.
just donations can already be a problem, apparently. But IANAL.
NOPE!!!
Donations are not a charge. A donation is as the word says a donation typically to support a voluntary effort or an organization working for the common good in some way.
A donation does not require anything in return.Why are you making scaremongering arguments from ignorance?
Did you actually read the quote I gave? I’m honestly confused.
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It’s not business oriented, it provides a unique ID attached to the machine, cryptographically proven.
Next step is to use that unique ID to identify you on the internet and digital life. Ending all privacy.
You think this is far fetched? Kernel-level anti-cheat for games already does this and bans the machine from playing that game ever again.
Couldn’t you theoretically swap out the tpm chip? Or spoof/emulate it? If not, how do VMs run Win11, do they just inherit the host tpm chip and that’s that? I feel like this was the same goal of having a mac address on each device, and it became irrelevant in short order.
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Please no, just imagine the influx of 0-days
I’ll bring the popcorn
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That sounds like an insane duration, even LTS distros are not usually anything like 15 years
There are companies still running XP.
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Did you actually read the quote I gave? I’m honestly confused.
or by accepting donations exceeding the costs associated with the design,
I’m guessing that’s what you are referring to, this is not relevant to normal donations, but only a use of “donations” to circumvent regulation.
Show me any FOSS project that has donations exceeding costs of development, it’s basically non existent, only the Linux kernel project itself, which is fair enough to be covered, since the Linux kernel is driven by commercial interests today, and “donations” are payment for membership and influence.The claim originally in this line of debate was that small projects could risk this, and no they can’t, only projects that are in reality commercial are affected. Those are very few, like Red Hat and the Linux kernel itself.
The legislators in EU are not morons, and they actually listen to the FOSS community. -
Or legislate that unsupported software becomes public domain or is open for development and the public can try and make the updates themselves.
Forcing people to upgrade entirely depends on the nature of the upgrades and the motive of the company. What we need is competition so there are alternatives for people to use if they don’t want to upgrade. But somehow Microsoft is not considered the monopoly of the PC OS market, despite being a monopoly, and uses that position to force changes nobody wants but them, like turning window into an AI data farming scheme that violates user privacy.
Or legislate that unsupported software becomes public domain
Solves a lot of issues.
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No, OS makers should just not make their OS bloated with useless shit, stealing your data and have arbitrary system requirements. I think 15 years of OS updates is excessive unless we’re talking about servers or very specific workflows. IMO 5-10 years is enough.
That said, for some operating systems it doesn’t even make sense to support for THAT long, because how they are designed (A lot of Linux distros for example). It turns out, if you don’t break users’ workflow, they don’t mind to upgrade.
I agree with most of that, but there are loads of embedded systems still running the equivalent of Windows XP and they’re chugging along just fine. That OS still receives updates and ending that would break a lot of backend stuff. Mostly banking.
Boeing just started making planes which don’t rely on floppy disks for updates. That will continue on the older part of the fleet until it’s no longer feasible to procure the disks or the planes are no longer airworthy. I mean, why not? If you only need to store a few mbs for something critical, it’s not a bad choice of medium.
If a system is secure, reliable and works for decades without complaint, there’s no need to fix that.
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or by accepting donations exceeding the costs associated with the design,
I’m guessing that’s what you are referring to, this is not relevant to normal donations, but only a use of “donations” to circumvent regulation.
Show me any FOSS project that has donations exceeding costs of development, it’s basically non existent, only the Linux kernel project itself, which is fair enough to be covered, since the Linux kernel is driven by commercial interests today, and “donations” are payment for membership and influence.The claim originally in this line of debate was that small projects could risk this, and no they can’t, only projects that are in reality commercial are affected. Those are very few, like Red Hat and the Linux kernel itself.
The legislators in EU are not morons, and they actually listen to the FOSS community.I will stop discussing since suddenly this is about “normal” and I guess “abnormal” donations, and I don’t think we’re having a clear-headed debate here.
