This is definitely true with regard to applications and services.
People give rms a hard time for going on about free software, but he saw this coming.
"One assumption is that software companies have an unquestionable natural right to own software and thus have power over all its users. (If this were a natural right, then no matter how much harm it does to the public, we could not object.) Interestingly, the U.S. Constitution and legal tradition reject this view; copyright is not a natural right, but an artificial government-imposed monopoly that limits the users’ natural right to copy." -rms[1]
I don't suggest jumping into the deep-end with free software mentality without full consideration.
However, Google Play Music went under recently[2] with all of the content that people bought becoming potentially unavailable, so it's worth thinking about how much we don't own.
[1]- https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/fsfs/rms-essays.pdf
[2]- https://9to5google.com/2020/12/03/google-play-music-dead/
We'll always be at the mercy of hardware manufacturers until we can make our own chips at home.
In practice, however, we can make chips at home, using FPGAs. For example, Lattice ECP5 offers capabilities beyond what can be reasonably expected from true DIY chips, can be programmed using a completely free toolchain, and let you design your hardware as RTL, which gives you all the freedom to build a free hardware layer for your free software stack.
RTL designs in particular have a much reduced chance for FPGA-specific "closedness" to leak into the software stack, like it is the case with BLOB-based device drivers. While the designs will be FPGA-specific for performance reasons, they are not forced to be closed-source, nor will the specifics be visible outside the HDL.
Again, in the strictest sense, Lattice chips are non-free too and you are at their mercy not to withdraw their support and tell their lawyers to go full nuclear on anyone working on the free toolchain, or free designs for their FPGAs. But then, with true DIY chips, the same could happen to your suppliers for wafers or chemicals. Or just other chipmakers threatening you with a lawsuit.
I would definitely prefer "more open", but having to use an FPGA is not something I would consider a show stopper. Whatever holds back free hardware, I don't think this is it.
Microsoft ships Flash with Edge and Internet Explorer, or allows it to be installed, but they have decided they no longer want to support this integration given that the software in question is no longer being supported and has a long history of security problems. They are no longer shipping it with Edge and IE and are preventing it from running there. You can choose to run it in other ways, but Microsoft does not want their browser used as an vehicle for exploits that come through Adobe. Chrome and Firefox are planning to do the same, for similar reasons, and you can also get Flash working on those manually if needed in similar ways.
The title here is pure clickbait. It's not Windows 10, it's a change in the default behavior of Edge and IE, and eventually Firefox and Chrome. A change that's as easy to work around as it was to get flash originally before browser vendors started including it by default.
If you want to talk about signed bootloaders and completely locked down systems and app stores and how those devices aren't really owned by you anymore, I'm totally on board. But to say that a change in the default behavior of a few applications on just some of the operating systems you can install on your PC is evidence of you not owning your computer, I think that's a lot harder of a case to make.
look, similarly, whilst i think the world would be better off if vaccines were legally mandatory, i would never support someone who tried to make that so. it's not (and never is) about the specifics of this _one_ thing - the world will be a better place without flash - but the general principle of who owns what & freedom. if i _truly_ own my computer, then this could never happen.
> They are no longer shipping it with Edge and IE and are preventing it from running there.
i don't think that's the case. the article mentions removal of the abode flash player component. a user must have already installed this application manually. browsers are to remain unaffected (for now at least). here's a quote from the article:
> It is worth noting that this change won’t affect your browsers where Flash will still remain a built-in component until the next big browser update.
this is more akin to microsoft shipping an update that removes VLC, and hence from the 1st of january, all your mkv videos stop playing.
Sure it could. You can own your house but choose to rent your furniture or borrow a couch from a friend. You then no longer have total control over those pieces of furniture, even if you do own your house.
Similarly, you can control your computer but choose to run specific software on it that automatically updates and changes itself. You can also choose not to do so. You are fully capably of not running Edge or IE, and choosing an old static version of Firefox with automatic updates disabled or some other browser that doesn't automatically update.
By choosing to install and/or use those applications that update automatically, you are opting in to their behavior. It was not forced on you. That goes for browsers, but it also goes for Windows. I don't think it makes sense to say you don't control your computer because of choices you made about what you run on it, especially when you still have the ability to change those choices.
> a user must have already installed this application manually.
All the major browsers switched to shipping Flash with their runtimes years ago so they could control the update process and make sure it was patched. Flash is shipped with Firefox, Chrome, Edge and IE (the latter two with OS updates most likely).
> this is more akin to microsoft shipping an update that removes VLC, and hence from the 1st of january, all your mkv videos stop playing.
No, I think you misunderstand what's going on. From the article itself: "It is worth noting that this change won’t affect your browsers where Flash will still remain a built-in component until the next big browser update." That next major browser update is when those browsers, Chrome and Firefox, are also removing flash. Everyone is doing it now because a year or so ago Adobe announced all support for Flash was ending at the end of 2020, and none of them want to ship an unsupported component with a bad security history.
Wish people would stop using this phrase with regards to PCs. If you buy a laptop, it's yours. Load linux on it and you will never have to deal with this. Even the new M1 Macs will offer this option (though there are some hoops to jump through).
What you don't own is the commercial software which runs atop it. In some cases the hardware makes it difficult to change what software you run (most smartphones), but we're talking about Windows PCs here. You can install what you want on them.
If you don't like what Microsoft and Adobe are doing, don't use their software.
But whatever piece of proprietary software you run with DRM and obfuscation and licensing, you don't control. It's up to you to do a cost analysis and decide if it's "worth it" -- I use lots of proprietary software, I'll admit. Office365 and Steam are two big examples that I either can't or won't give up because of the professional or personal consequences.
However, in both cases, I'm not in control of either piece of software. That's what I get for using proprietary software. It sounds like crazy Stallman ranting, but maybe he was right on this one -- the real solution is to not let proprietary plugins like Flash become "required" to use the net. As long as your computing platform is free, you have the choice not to.
The number of people agreeing with this sentiment that this is about controlling our computers is kind of disheartening. This isn't OS or firmware level lockdowns, just a piece of software.
I only bring in Linux when I need it to get a job done!
I use MacOS and have an iPhone. I don't worry about the philosophy since they have for years done (mostly) what I need. If it look like MacOS will stop being useful to me, good resale values on Macs means I can move on.
Do you think it's better to offer no suggestion at all? To not even tell people about their options?
Especially my mom, dad, sister and almost everyone else I know use one application on their computer and that is Chrome. My father still works and so does my sister and yet they do not work with or need anything else. Linux works fine for that. Almost everyone I know would not know the difference between an Ubuntu laptop or a windows one as long as the Chrome button ('the internet') is there.
Ofcourse this differs if people need native applications (maybe) but I would say that most people would not notice Linux at all. Not because Linux is great (I use it exclusively but I do not care about ux/ui), but because most people do not do so much 'natively' with a computer anymore and hence can switch fluently from Mac to win to lin to ios to Android (and frequently do during the day between some combinations of these) as long as they can find 'the internet' button.
The vast majority of PC users don't give a fuck if they "Own Their Hardware" or any other philosophical questions about their computer. They buy a tool and use it. Generally speaking, those tools work just fine for them until ultimately the drive fails or they drop it into a creek while hiking.
It's the nerds on HN who bitch about "Owning their computer". Literally the people who should have the skills and knowledge to fix the very problem they are complaining about. If you tried to talk to your mom or your sister about how they don't own their computers they would likely look at you as if you were insane.
FWIW, I'm only intermittently a Linux user, mostly I use MacOS.
[0] and belive me, I've tried [1][2].
[1] Some evangelist is typing a response right now about how I haven't really tried. They are part of the problem.
[2] I've put together my own distro, written and contributed to open source projects, until sometime earlier this year ran Linux on 4/5 computers I used regularly at home (now down to 1/5), and was even president of a LUG for a while. So shut up about how your grandma uses it as a web kiosk so it must be fine for everyone.
I do! I bought it after all.
If the software does something I did not agree to at time of purchase, I'm going to hold the seller accountable.
If the gardener you're paying suddenly went and threw a painting in the trash because he considered it ugly you'd have a problem with them too.
Whether or not people 'agreed' to this being done is another question though.
Did you? Maybe you should re-read that 400 page EULA you browsed past.
When you buy software you are agreeing that you don't own that software. You are instead buying a license to use that software.
> If the software does something I did not agree to at time of purchase, I'm going to hold the seller accountable.
When you buy software, you fundamentally agree that it is suitable for no particular purpose. Since much of the software you "buy" isn't even something you've paid for, the vendor can shut off that hose whenever they want.
> If the gardener you're paying suddenly went and threw a painting in the trash because he considered it ugly you'd have a problem with them too.
I'm sure your agreement with your gardener looks quite different from the EULA you agree to when you use software.
Except for:
> When you buy software you are agreeing that you don't own that software. You are instead buying a license to use that software.
This is incorrect in many jurisdictions, including the EU, regardless of what the EULA or whatever would make you believe, for software distributed in the way Microsoft Windows is [1]
[1]: http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&doc...
Instead ownership works similar to as it would for, for example, a book. You don't own the IP, but you do own the book.
Also I don't own the gardener either, the distinction doesn't even matter.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Extensible_Firmware_In...
In other words, when the problem becomes bad enough, we as metaphorical frogs, will react normally.
This is a Good Thing, and you should be wishing Microsoft, Apple, Google did this more often, because if they did, we'd all be meaningfully safer, having lost zero liberty along the way.
Nobody's freedom is threatened because Microsoft removed software that was notoriously unsafe and was also set to stop working at the same time. Maybe a more apt analogy would be "boy who cried wolf"...
Because "threatening my freedom" is either a) an incredible overreaction, or b) meaningless.
You are not going to have your freedoms curtailed. You will not go to prison. You will be able to share your opinion on the matter without restriction. You may continue to practice your chosen religion. You will not be taxed. You will not have additional restrictions placed upon your travel. You will not be required to house troops in your residence.
You can even choose to not install the OS update, and your old software will continue to work. You can choose to reinstall an old version of the OS, and your old software will continue to work.
Perhaps you desire an ongoing and perpetual right to download new versions of a commercial software product, which will never include changes that you do not personally desire. That right does not exist and it never has. This is not a threat to your freedom.
?? It's possible to hack around the update, but it's a forcibly-pushed update that breaks something on your machine, and the only easy way to stop it is to go offline permanently
But the point the GP is making is that it's also not totally implausible to do, if there were any real motivation for people to pursue it.
There was a real reason for people to want to "take control" of Android, and so we got LineageOS.
I really couldn't care less about the agreements, they are something nobody can afford to read and many times something that can be changed without notice anyways.
I agreed to a license. If that license doesn't say that the "manufacturer" can arbitrarily remove features at a later date then I'm not sure how they get a pass for that.
Edit (to your edit): Yeah. It sounds criminal to me. They'd be exceeding their access granted to my system. Definitely sounds like CFAA territory in the US. Fat chance that anything would be done about it, but it can still piss me off (and make me try to gin-up pissed-off feelings in other people).
7.2 Updating. If your Computer is connected to the Internet, the Software may, without additional notice, check for Updates that are available for automatic download and installation to your Computer and let Adobe know the Software is successfully installed.
10. Limitation of Liability. IN NO EVENT WILL ADOBE, ITS SUPPLIERS, OR CERTIFICATION AUTHORITIES BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR ANY DAMAGES, CLAIMS OR COSTS WHATSOEVER INCLUDING ANY CONSEQUENTIAL, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, OR ANY LOST PROFITS OR LOST SAVINGS, EVEN IF AN ADOBE REPRESENTATIVE HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH LOSS, DAMAGES, OR CLAIMS. THE FOREGOING LIMITATIONS AND EXCLUSIONS APPLY TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW IN YOUR JURISDICTION. ADOBE’S AGGREGATE LIABILITY AND THAT OF ITS SUPPLIERS AND CERTIFICATION AUTHORITIES UNDER OR IN CONNECTION WITH THIS AGREEMENT SHALL BE LIMITED TO THE AMOUNT PAID FOR THE SOFTWARE, IF ANY.
So their argument would be that you accepted that the software would update automatically and that in any event you'd have no claim for loss. Does CFAA apply once you've already bent over?
If your Computer is connected to the Internet, the Software may, without additional notice, check for Updates that are available for automatic download and installation to your Computer and let Adobe know the Software is successfully installed. The Software may automatically download and install updates from time to time from Adobe. These updates may take the form of bug fixes, new features, or new versions. You agree to receive such updates from Adobe as part of your use of the Software.
I could see an argument that a self-destruct mechanism is a "bug fix" or a "new version". I could also see an argument that it's not.
I'm coming around to the line of thinking that another poster mentioned-- that this could be considered Adobe criminally exceeding the access to my system that I've granted them. I agreed to updates. Not to removal of functionality.
I can't do a damned thing about it, but it pisses me off, and I want other people to be pissed off about it to. Taking away functionality in somebody else's computer is unethical in my moral framework. Normalizing that idea is dangerous and wrong to me, too.
[1] https://www.adobe.com/content/dam/cc/en/legal/licenses-terms...
Edit: Would it be your contention that all software developers have the right to remove functionality in their software at any time? Does consideration paid factor into that? What if it's expeditious for my business model to disable my older software to get you to move to my new software? Does such disabling constitute an "update"?
Computing has been a major part of my life for 35 years. I wish that I didn't have dependence in proprietary software but I do. Within that context this matters a lot to me.
Normalizing the idea that the developers of proprietary software are acting ethically (if within their legal rights, which I would dispute) when they remove functionality is very troubling to me.
I would rather that this kind of behavior, on the part of developers, be both socially taboo and illegal. Failing illegal I'll settle for socially taboo.
Alternatively, if this is allowed to pass, what material differences will come into existence as a result? What predictions will you make about the lasting consequences of this specific action?
It's difficult for me to conceive of my reaction as an overreaction. I would like to explore that dialogue, but I can't get myself into a place to work from. I just can't do it.
Alternatively, if this is allowed to pass, what material differences will come into existence as a result? What predictions will you make about the lasting consequences of this specific action?
People won't know what general purpose computers are. They'll accept silly ideas like "Well, my computer just can't do that thing anymore." The full value that computers can bring to individuals and to society won't be realized.
General purpose computers are a unique invention in human history. I hold the value they bring to humanity in high esteem. I think their ability to affect positive change on the human condition is difficult to understate.
I perceive a systematic effort, and a manifest effect brought on by the marketplace, to eliminate access to general purpose computing for individuals and to replace computers with vaguely computer-shaped appliances.
We're racing headlong into a "The Right to Read" scenario. Feeling that it's normal to accept somebody altering your computer because you agreed to a vaguely-worded license agreement stilted heavily in the favor of the software developer isn't alright. The more people think that's alright the worse things are for everybody.
Sorry, but if you can't even conceive that you're wrong, you're not equipped to argue about it.
Not being able to conceive that I'm not overreacting doesn't mean that I can't conceive that I'm wrong. It means that I can't conceive that I'm overreacting.
I had a hard time responding to your first inquiry. I responded to your "Alternatively..." inquiry as an alternative. Instead of addressing what I could respond to you just dismiss me. That disappoints me.
You might have been right and I'm missing something, but now we won't know.
I'm sorry I have to dismiss you, as you're not willing to entertain the possibility I'm right.
Which is not what I said.
I suppose I should have just dismissed you when I asked questions that you didn't "satisfactorily" respond to.
Hell no. This is essentially the rise of authoritarianism...
Voting with your wallets has never really worked. Consumer preferences do change overtime but getting millions of people to act in unison is an exercise in futility. Until someone with actual market-swaying power brakes the wheel it will keep on spinning.
Successful boycotts seems to deal with worker mistreatment, racial discrimination and other unethical behavior that a business may be doing. Even then they are not always successful but it certainly is easier to explain the situation to people in those cases. However, still run into issues like it is too essential like food or just too much apathy for the entire market of that product.
A dead frog will "jump out" if placed in boiling water, but not if brought up to temperature gradually.
In 2020, we no longer have a right to act surprised about this, because we should've done something to fight it a long time ago.
I will abandon platforms that take away my control. That's not tenable for a lot of people. There's just a lot of "cool stuff" that I don't get to use if there isn't a Free solution. I deal with it. I hate it, but I deal with it.
> I will abandon platforms that take away my control.
If you are still using Google Chrome, then it sounds like you will work to avoid the limitations of platforms that take away your control, which is very different from avoiding them.
I continue to use various hobbled Chrome versions when circumstances dictate. I use Firefox when I can.
I wish I didn't need Chrome from time to time. If my underlying OS prevents me from hobbling Chrome I'll ultimately have to abandon Chrome (and probably the OS).
This meme needs to die. If all the choices are bad and you choose the least bad, you don't support it.
For SaaS of course, that's something to be aware of. Since I don't have the hardware and software under my control, I have no say in when the supplier stops providing it. Many people have learned this the hard way with Google services, just as an example (there are many others, not picking on Goggle in particular here).
I'm waiting for 2025 when a piece of cutlery or your garden hose will need internet activation.
It's wrong every time I have to do something to allow my computer to continue doing something it already did. This is why I have to be exceedingly careful not to install updates on those dwindling platforms where I still have that control. I have no idea what features are going to be removed, and usually have no way to get them back. (Hello e-fuses in the Nintendo Switch, or Apple no longer signing old iOS releases to prevent downgrading.)
We should not normalize the idea that third-parties can take away the capabilities of devices we own.
Edit: I would go so far as to say that it should be illegal for a device manufacturer to prevent you from reinstalling any old firmware onto a device you own. (Yes, yes-- I know that we're getting into the whole "But that old device firmware has security bugs! Think of the Internet!" discussion. Liability, both for device manufacturers and for device owners, is a conversation we need to have too.)
The vendor has already distributed the software with the QA done as thoroughly as possible/ practical, issued a TOS denying a warranty or any sort of protection from failure - that we all agreed to - and yet the litigation is inevitable if something happens to the end-user on account of a vulnerability in the software.
Its not their computer, but in our litigation-happy cultural climate, its their responsibility. No one is preventing us from doing what we want with our computers with this flash issue - just reducing liability.
I care about true device ownership but there are like literally only probably what? 1000's 10's of thousands globally even a million or two globally of us isn't much compared to billions using the devices.
Only the "diehard techies" will care. Based on how many of my technical friends have knuckled-under and normalized these kinds of affronts to freedom apparently there are fewer "diehard techies" than I thought, too.
I wish that I could just "turn off" my love for computing and computers. Instead, I get to see my hobby and vocation die a long, painful death.
Could it be possible that it's actually less of an issue than it seems to you?
>Only the "diehard techies" will care.
I'm a diehard techie and I do not care.
Individuals should bear some of the liability for how their devices are used. If my device that I've opted to take off the vendor-prescribed updated train causes a public menace that should be my liability.
You're free to stop updating Windows right?
You shipped the code. It exists forever. You don't get to take it away later because it's not in your business interests.
Fix bugs? I'll pay for that if I want that. Software is a service. They shouldn't be obligated to fix bugs for free (unless they agreed to that in a contract).
With Windows 10 I'm not free to stop updating Windows if I want a computer connected to the Internet. Microsoft does dirty tricks to make if very difficult for me from completely stopping the update treadmill. They've shown that it's an arms race, too. I can't possibly keep up with that opponent.
If yes, what’s your point?
We've already normalized the idea that a significant market percentage of small-form-factor battery-operated general purpose computers don't actually belong to the people who bought them.
We're a hair's breadth away from normalizing that idea with personal computers.
The frog continues to boil slowly...
Terrifying thought.
https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rdriley/487/papers/Thompson_1984_Ref...
I vaguely recall that this (or something similar) was one of the worries about Palladium/NGSCB back in the day.
My opinion only here, but the only company to blame for this is Adobe and this isn't corporations slowly taking over your computer (aside from the fact that yes, it is happening) - this is just another example of how Adobe hates their customers, sort of like how you can't buy Photoshop anymore and you have to put up with their cloud updater that will delete your mac's backblaze folder. Software with an expiration date is an old poison that Adobe has repurposed to EOL their own product because they're tired of maintaining it.
I am perfectly fine with a world in which end user companies or individuals assume liability when they fail to adhere to a manufacturer's prescribed update regime.
In the business world, I expect insurers to drive this. As "cyber attacks" get more and more costly the insurance industry is going to put the hammer down.
But you need to temper your argument across your posts here with the various benefits of the appliancification of computing for most people.
Since you don't, it becomes impossible to parcel whatever argument you're making from the arguments of "people should care more about <arbitrary thing that I happen to care about>" and "anything that addresses the needs of others over me is bad" and "there is literally nothing good about an automatic Windows update removing Flash."
IIRC, under the aegis of seatbelt laws some states impounded cars that didn't get a critical safety-related recall due an issue with the Toyota automated seatbelts of the late 80s/early 90s.
Issues like that often end up with class action suits to deal with corporate liability issues, it's not all personal liability either.
Maybe that's still too "one time for one particular issue" to easily dismiss the flaws in your analogy. What about emissions-related recalls?
Some states still have ongoing vigorous emissions testing requirements and some of those requirements include checking for emissions-related recalls. Failures are sometimes impounded, almost always disallowed permits/registrations to use of the roads.
One of the largest scandals of which should still be in recent memory, "Dieselgate", where VW was forced at great expense to recall entire models of cars that would not be allowed on the roads of all states that followed US EPA laws. Which the US federal government led a lawsuit (which included several states as additional complaintants) against VW for the problem, and leveraged a massive corporate liability fine. VW had to work to buy back all the recalled vehicle models, and had to do massive corporate restructuring in response to the US provided mandates that they accepted in lieu of fine payment.
Your car analogy is over-simplified, even if it is not entirely wrong.
I totally agree that it feels weird and is bad if an update actively uninstalls something for legal reasons, like Amazon taking stuff off of Kindles remotely, but we're talking about software the user didn’t ask to install and that the maker is shutting off anyway.
The vast majority of Flash usage was web-based and the web version will cease to be supported at the server level and at the browser level in a matter of weeks. Users that deliberately want to run insecure software or outdated web browsers have that option, and there are plenty of alternatives to display archival content.
Any non web-based Flash applications have been written using Adobe Air for over 12 years (and desktop Flash apps have always been a rarity anyway), and Adobe Air isn’t going away. If there really is a self-contained app (probably a game) that wasn’t packaged using Adobe Air that absolutely relies on an ActiveX plugin, there are alternatives the user can find and use. Technology becomes obsolete. And software stops running. At least there are preservation efforts out there.
There are infinitesimal edge cases where a user knowingly and specifically installed Flash Player for non web-based purposes. Those users are going to be given a warning before the application is removed, allowing them time to find an alternative way to access those files.
I'm pretty sure you can choose to not run Windows 10.
If you run Windows or OSX that is.
Windows 10 automatically updates itself, which is a reasonable thing for a consumer operating system to do. It happens to be a very "wide and deep" OS which includes a lot of userland stuff as part of the same release bundle, like OS X/macOS. There are FOSS projects that also operate this way. The GNOME environment comes to mind as a similarly "wide and deep" example. I myself have had the experience of having a GNOME feature I was using removed after an update. The recourse in that case isn't much different from the recourse in the Windows 10 Flash case. You can either live without the removed thing or find a third party solution. What you can't do is just stop updating the thing; you'd lose (community) support and important bug fixes.
Of course, as long as it's FOSS you can just fork it, right? But really that's not the appropriate solution for cases like this. We're talking about the removal of a basically stand-alone feature. If the official bundle stops supporting that thing, forking the bundle is not the way forward. Bringing in a third party is.
So the way I see it, both the problem and the solution here are the same for both Windows and large FOSS software bundles like GNOME. They're the opposite of narrow projects, so stuff is bound to get removed eventually. You can't stay on an old version, you shouldn't fork, and in some cases you probably shouldn't even protest, as the reasoning for removal may be sound.
That's the choice being argued. You should have that option. It's unreasonable to expect that old software will always be supported. There is a real cost to it. But as long as I still have the machine it should be my choice as to when it no longer does the things I need it to do (at least until the point of physical failure).
It’s way too much effort to do to for all software you use but not too unreasonable for your most used tools. At work we maintain lots of forks of libs we use. I maintain a fork of Ansible that has niceties like blocks you can loop over. It’s somewhat controversial to patch in features but we ended up deciding that it’s more important for software to do what we want.
It's one thing to shut down servers used by an online service (and there's already plenty of disgust about that), it's something else entirely to essentially reach into everyone's machines and delete what they don't want! Imagine if Microsoft decided to attempt to wipe all traces of MS-DOS from existence --- this is similar, in that people have spent countless hours of effort and built lots of "applications" upon the platform, and while they would not expect the original company will "support" that eternally, they expect it to still be usable.
No doubt there will be something in the EULA that lets them do this, but I still think it's crossing a line.
The frog continues to boil slowly...