There always were ways to "upgrade" your Windows edition (Home -> Pro, etc) through less official channels. I can imagine these "corporate" patches will also make their way somehow.

There's also enough community interest to maintain Win10 support for more legitimate projects: <https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat>.

I'd also like EU to step in and mandate a continued patching period proportional to the number of deployed devices. After all, it's in their own interest: many devices used in day-to-day administration/operations likely do not need an upgrade; landfill is costly; etc.

So they are going to fix the bugs in the software I already paid for, but they are not going to share them with me.

From Microsoft's perspective, once your OS skew is out of support you got what you paid for in complete.

I don't see much morality in MS's practices, but at least it's straightforward. Like buying a phone with a 2 year warranty, if you actually wish for 10 years instead you'll be paying for the 8 extra years separately.