I see this as a spectrum of commercial relationships ranging from mutually-beneficial to predatory. And the question of whether you "have to" upgrade certainly has an effect on that.

Well the "have to" thing is fungible of course. We don't "have to" do much of anything. We can "choose" to live in the woods and hunt and trap and fish and depend largely on a barter economy with our neighbors and raise sled dogs to sell for a little cash here and there (see the US "reality" TV series "Yukon Men"). That choice, however, comes with its own imperatives that cannot be chosen and must be lived with.

If we "choose" to work in a business that must communicate regularly with other businesses and government agencies in the United States, then in most cases, one of the imperatives is using Windows computers. Linux and the limited array of software for it won't cut it. Apple is far too expensive, and the range of available software is too narrow. The stuff we produce and consume has to work, fully and completely, with standard MS Office software. The complexity of our fiscal structure requires extremely robust accounting software that is only available on Windows servers. And then there are federal HIPAA and state confidentiality requirements that preclude cost-effective use of "cloud-based" stuff.

The point is that my options are highly constrained. I am over a barrel and these vendors know it, and they soak me for it, and it makes me angry. We all have to cope with change, but most of the "change" that occurs in the software world deliberately made as a way to generate income and cut costs for vendors. We have faster and more powerful computers and yet software slows down because the vendors suck up that increased capacity with cheap, shoddy programming. They introduce new features that only a handful of customers want but which we are all required to pay for.

If I ask for something new I am quite willing to pay for it. If I think I will need "support" I am willing to pay for it. I object to predatory support policies that require me to pay continuously for support I never use. I acknowledge that these support packages sometimes come with "free" upgrades. Sometimes the "upgrades" are necessary, such as tax-law adjustments for accounting software. Sometimes they aren't, at least from the point of view of what I need the software for. They become necessary as a marketing strategy because the manufacturer deliberately breaks something so it won't work on a newer OS.

And there's the fact that software, on its own, never wears out, and the architecture of the platforms on which it runs doesn't change very much at all. There are no technical reasons why I shouldn't have been allowed to continue to run Office 97 on Windows 7, only financial ones. (I figured out all the registry hacks necessary to run it on an NT-style OS long ago.)

If people choose to follow a business model where they sell people the same thing over and over, they should accept the imperatives that come with that choice, and they should sell groceries or natural gas or other consumables, or machines that wear out. If your product is neither consumed nor wears out, then the only ethical option for making more money is to offer new features that people may want but are not required to buy, or to create entirely new products. Making money by deliberately breaking your product and forcing your customers to buy a new copy is illegal for everything except software. It should be illegal for software too.

And that oughta be about enough out of me. :)

Ken Dibble www.stic-cil.org