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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Intel is removing drivers and BIOS for its old desktop boards so anyone running an old Pentium-based PC has four days to get hold of anything they might need.
The warning on Intel's download center page says:
End Of Life - This download, BIOS Update [RL86510A.86A] P21, will no longer be available after November 22, 2019 and will not be supported with any additional functional, security, or other updates. All versions are provided as is. Intel recommends that users of BIOS Update [RL86510A.86A] P21 uninstall and/or discontinue use as soon as possible.
Opinion on message boards is mixed, with some accepting that a 20-year support cycle is not terrible. But others pointed out that some industries like manufacturing will still be relying on old hardware to run parts of their infrastructure.
Posters on Vogon, a forum dedicated to ancient hardware and emulators that allow you to run old games on newer machines, questioned the move and how much space and storage Intel would really save by the housekeeping measure.
Various people are setting up their own mirrors and using archive.org, but the maker community noted that file names are not always obvious and downloading from mirror sites can be risky.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday November 20 2019, @02:07PM (3 children)
So if you have old and essentially bug-free software (no known bugs for extended time), you have to keep making pointless updates just to keep it alive?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Hartree on Wednesday November 20 2019, @07:52PM
Have to justify your job somehow, I guess. ;)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 20 2019, @08:28PM
Why do you think all bug fixes introduce 1-3 new ones? It's not that software developers are bad, or software is hard, they just like job security.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday November 20 2019, @11:02PM
No.
If you have old and essentially bug-free software and still are claiming it is as maintained then one must still be alert to the possibility that it could be compromised. If an entity lists their products as CVE compatible (sometimes a prerequisite for enterprise-level acceptance of packages) one has to have somebody prepared to respond to CVE notices for that piece of software. One has to be prepared to migrate the web support pages when the company buys into a new CMS. One has to nominally assure that the program isn't suffering bit rot from the introduction of unexpected new technologies into an otherwise static environment.
TL/DR: If you claim to be maintaining software... you have to maintain it. (Even if that maintenance consists of no codebase changes).
Corollary: If you keep shit online, you may be establishing prima facie an intent that it is being maintained. Although hopefully your "THIS IS NOW END OF LIFE AND ARCHIVED ONLY" notice will win you the lawsuit, it doesn't stop someone from filing one against you. Especially if you have deep pockets. The deeper the pockets, the more PHB's you must have, sadly. Success breeds bureaucracy.
This sig for rent.