> You've probably made a transaction recently on a device that uses an old and unpatched version of windows CE.

I'm still shipping software for WinCE4.2 devices. They're supposed to be on their own little LAN segment, not bridged to the internet, with a border PC managing them. The upgrade path would almost certainly both an expensive nightmare and possibly infeasible - they have exactly enough Flash for the OS they shipped with.

It's really a cost-benefit tradeoff; all these software updates cost money. Who pays for that, under what circumstances, and why?

> The reality is the manufacturers still have the mentality that once something is sold their responsibility ends.

Not my experience. I have three hardware devices that worked on Windows, Linux and FreeBSD 5-10 years ago, and now only work on Windows and FreeBSD. (Amusingly enough one of them is a windows CE device)

Isn't that another example of manufacturers not supporting their hardware? Are the windows/FreeBSD drivers still maintained or do they just still work?

I think I quoted the wrong line. They're not maintained, but they still work because Windows and FreeBSD have stable driver ABIs.

WebGL and webusb make that a big security risk.

So if we had a stable ABI the manufacturer writes a driver, ships, and forgets about it, and the driver just continues working when I update the OS.

Thus, with what you describe, the argument can be made that the Linux driver model doesn't appropriately take into consideration the incentives and needs of hardware manufacturers.

Until there is a security flaw found in the driver. Then what do you do? The linux driver model is much better for users and security.