The day MS depracates WinAPI, they're control of the desktop is over, as every company which develops huge codebases will switch to an environment where their programs doesn't have to be rewritten at MS's discretion.

Is there any platform an enterprise could switch to that would guarantee a slower rate-of-change than Windows? "One major rewrite-requiring breaking change in 20 years" sounds like—if not a good deal—the best one I could foresee getting anywhere.

IBM (Oracle, too, I would guess).

http://www.longpelaexpertise.com.au/ezine/IBMBackwardCompati... has a very good observation, though:

"The reality is that backward compatibility is only possible if there are enough users paying […] for it."

It is the same for Microsoft. If, for example, several big customers would want 16 bit support on x64, I'm sure they would provide it.

Once you rewrite once, the red line is broken. I think joelonsoftware has an article about that.

Sure they will rather change to a platform in the hands of Oracle,Apple or Google.

What platform is that?

The issue is that this is only of concern to application developers who don't want to use old APIs. Systems owners, managers, and users won't care if it gets the job done predictably and cost-effectively. And if the vendor is willing to keep that stack around and support it...

> stuck with decades old software

"reap the rewards of mature software"