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That patch was not generally available months ago

It was reportedly available to those who were still officially supported, though, possibly as far back as February.

As others have suggested, Microsoft has historically offered support (in the sense of at least security patches) for each generation of Windows for much longer than any of the major FOSS operating systems. Obviously you don't get free, unlimited, eternal support with any version of any OS, but even then Microsoft has apparently made arrangements with those who really didn't want to update to a more recent one than XP to continue offering support in return for additional funding.

As I said before, the real problem here is how to deal with the conflict between wanting to keep connected systems up-to-date with security patches, while at the same time not breaking their essential functionality. Medical systems used in regulated environments where failures may literally be a matter of life or death are pretty much the ultimate example of this difficulty.



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