"Every operating system then, and every threat model, naturally expires at the end of 19 years. If it be deployed longer, it is legacy tech, and should be deprecated." - Thomas Jefferson

Move fast and break things

- Napoleon Bonaparte

There is a story, often told, that upon exiting the Constitutional Convention Benjamin Franklin was approached by a group of citizens asking what sort of government the delegates had created. His answer was: "A republic, if you can keep it past 19 years. At that time the sudoers will change the repositories used for OS updates." [1]

"What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the contents of sudoers? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of sysadmins and backdoors. It is it’s natural manure." [2] Thomas Jefferson

[1] https://constitutioncenter.org/learn/educational-resources/h...

[2] https://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/tre...

Arguably every election that brings in a new government is a reboot. A revolution is more like wiping the drive and installing a new OS.

> Arguably every election that brings in a new government is a reboot. A revolution is more like wiping the drive and installing a new OS.

In the UK, Governments change but Parliament persists. The basics mechanism of state are unchanged until a new Govt defines and votes through new policies. Unlike the US, the UK's civil service doesn't substantially change as a result of an election.

The last really significant change to Parliament was perhaps the 1832 reform act which got of rotten boroughs - constituencies with few if any voters that still returned MPs. Since then the House of Commons has gained primary over the House of Lords, whose main role now is delaying/modifying Govt proposals. The last big reboot was the Restoration.

I'd say it's more like an upgrade. The release notes promise all sorts of improvements, but they often bring new bugs.

A revolution is more like wiping the drive and installing a new OS - from a backup that still contains malware from the previous revolution.

Rebooting is old school. People are like, look we rebooted our Windows in 1777 why are you still using that outdated Constitutional Monarchy stuff? Don't you realise we gave up monarchs hundreds of years ago? Meanwhile we have been live patching and running pacman daily and have installed packages for metric, proportional voting(not everywhere), gun control, universal healthcare and plastic bank notes.

Or Italy. Especially Italy.