Campaigners urge EU to mandate 15 years of OS updates European e-waste campaigners are calling on EU leadership to force tech vendors to provide 15 years of software updates, using Microsoft's plan to end Windows 10 support next month — which may make an estimated 400 million PCs obsolete — as a textbook case of avoidable e-waste. Protest banners PIRG petitions Microsoft to …
And some of these landfill computers are newer than that! They were still advertised for sale in 2022 from some places.
The date should start when the hardware reaches the end user - not the PC resellers warehouse.
The problem isn't the Win 11 rebranding, it's the forced retirement of very new hardware.
> Hey, remember when Windows 10 was going to be the last version of Windows? No? Neither does Microsoft.
That has never been a position adopted officially by Microsoft. It was never a position stated by anyone senior enough at Microsoft to announce such a thing.
A Microsoft "development evangelist" stated it at a conference. Once.
Even the Ars article you refer to signs off with
For the time being, of course, Microsoft is sticking with Windows 10. It'll be the last version of Windows, right up until the marketers think it's time for a new version.
The thing is though, with rolling enforced updates since Win10, launching a "new" version always seemed a bit strange and pointless anyway. All these quarterly/bi-annual/annual "major" updates are basically new versions anyway. They just happen to call them all Windows 10 or Windows 11 when in reality what we have is 11.0, 11.1, 11.2 etc. And MS clearly have a system whereby they can restrict [major] updates to certain devices if it might brick them or not support some bit of hardware.
They just released patches yesterday that reached as far back as iOS 15, which patched the iPhone 6S released 10 years ago this month.
What do people want the EU to mandate 15 years for? For critical security updates like Apple released, for ALL security updates, for all bugfixes, for providing new versions of the OS? Who would the onus be on in the PC world, the PC OEM who you bought the product from, or Microsoft who supplies the OS but who nominally the consumer has no direct "customer" relationship with as far product purchase?
Phones, maybe ten years is enough.
But desktop PCs last several decades - as do laptops that have replaceable batteries.
Even corporate refresh is often a decade, and the desktop itself is generally sold on to further use with a wiped or replacement hard disk.
Aside from that, it's not true anyway.
Apple support dates start from launch, which means 99.9% of the actual units are far younger.
For example, a 2017 iMac went out of support in 2022 - just five years. But that was really only 3 years as they were still sold in 2019.
Even Dell do 5 year support contracts post-receipt.
My S20+ just fell out of support. No scratches, screens 100% intact, and the battery will only be down to about 36% by the time my workday is done.
So now I have to go out and buy a whole new phone just for security purposes? What a waste of money when I have a perfectly good phone already. Give us 10 years!
But i guess the point is that with the end of moores law, and the massive increase in reliability of electronic equipment, the duration of 'useable' / 'viable' electronic devices will more and more be not defined by when they are unable to run the latest software or physically fail, but when the hardware is no longer supported by software.
It will. If the regulation says "15 years", MS will be fined until they manage to support their OS for 15 years. They won't add an if to the installer which checks the TPM version and throw up an error if you don't have it because that will earn them fines. That means computers won't end up in landfill.
See?
"It will. If the regulation says "15 years", MS will be fined until they manage to support their OS for 15 years."
But is it just MS or will this be some dumbass regulation with terrible knock on effects to deal with what isnt a problem?
The group says Microsoft's fast-approaching Windows 10 support cut-off deadline is a prime example of why EU intervention is needed: to stop vendors from rendering perfectly good machines effectively obsolete through software support withdrawals rather than hardware failure.
No. This is an example of why such groups dont think things through. The machines are far from obsolete, the hardware is still working and as BasicReality said, install linux.
"That means computers won't end up in landfill."
And they would do this because??? Tonnes of cheap hardware still serviceable? This doesnt need MS forced to support it, this needs barely any imagination to provide cheap machines for work, school, gaming, etc.
They kind of did. Not close enough to that screen to meet your conditions, but they did provide instructions.
@Dan 55
"Did MS tell people how to install Linux when they popped that message up saying that Windows 10 support for their computer was coming to an end and they could buy a new one with Windows 11?"
When Tesco stops selling your favourite brand of something do they tell you where to go to get it?
Did MS tell people how to install Linux when they popped that message up saying that Windows 10 support for their computer was coming to an end and they could buy a new one with Windows 11?
Why should they? They're a business, they'll push their own product?
MS have made a product descision. You may not agree with it, or like the company, but to think that they should provide you unlimited software upgrades; and then detailed instructions on how to switch to an alternative, all for the price of a single windows licence, seems bonkers.
Not only have they decided to not support the hardware with Windows 10 any more but they decided to check in the installer for a TPM 2.0 unit and not support the hardware if it's not there.
Many people are going to send their computers to landfill because they don't know they can change a BIOS setting, others are going to send their computers to landfill because they don't know they can buy a TPM 2.0 unit for their motherboard, and others are going to send computers to landfill because it's an artificial test, if the check were removed from the installer then Windows 11 would run perfectly fine.
And then when the EU regulations and fines become too burdensome and the bottom line profit starts to suffer, Microsoft simply exits the EU market completely and refuses to do further business with EU member states. Which of course, leaves the EU member states Apple Inc. or Linux. Not much of a choice but there you go and here we are.
"Microsoft simply exits the EU market completely and refuses to do further business with EU member states"
How many times do we hear these old trope pushed out?
Did MS exit the EU when forced to unbundle IE?
Did Apple exit the EU when forced to adopt USB C?
Did software companies leave the EU when forced to comply with GDPR?
No
Reason?
The EU is one of the largest markets in the world. Try telling the shareholders "Oh we're, just going to kill 30-50% of our profits because we don't want to spend a few million maintaining it"
Optimist. We have been here before with regulations. Microsoft compliance will be just sufficient to appeal/delay the fine but not enough to be useful. It will be tied up in court until after the user has to buy a replacement. When there is no more value to Microsoft in further delay they will update Windows 10 to support old hardware and make the court case moot. In the mean time, applications will only function properly on Windows 11+. This has happened before:
Documentation for SMB protocol.
Bundling of Internet Explorer.
Bundling of Windows Media Player.
Requiring OEMs to bundle Windows will all PCs/Laptops to qualify for discounted license prices.
Requiring a company to do something can work but only after years of litigation. By the time the fine hits, Microsoft will already have all the profit they can get out non-compliance because an independent technical solution will be available.
These were antitrust investigations, not regulations. No court case happened over USB-C, in the end Apple had to adapt.
Also, to somehow make applications only work on Windows 11+, MS would have to intentionally wreck Win32 to make it only work with Windows 11. Sabotaging Win32 on Windows 10 would mean they end up with another anti-trust case.
Trust in hardware, yes. Because the affected Intel chips aren’t supported.
It may not help with whatever issue you clearly have, but that specific issue, which was extremely important to their business customers (who, by the way, pay the bills for all this).
You losing trust because you don’t get updates on affected hardware and didn’t bother to investigate the reason? That’s on you.
Microsoft could have made Windows 11 a completely compelling update - faster, more intuitive, more helpful. Instead it was released incomplete, with added spyware and a nagging insistence that it was MS way or the highway. You will use Edge...
What are we - 5 years on? You know what MS perhaps it is time to jump into the Mac environment. I've done an audit and the only piece of software I will lose is Visio.
So this month my perfectly functioning laptop will be reformatted as a Chromebook and my new daily driver will be a MacBook.
It did not have to be this way.
It will. If the regulation says "15 years", MS will be fined until they manage to support their OS for 15 years. They won't add an if to the installer which checks the TPM version and throw up an error if you don't have it because that will earn them fines. That means computers won't end up in landfill.
See?
It won't be MS, it will be everyone.
If you release an electronic device you'll have to plan and buget for 15 years support. Which you will factor in to the price.
Maybe a better remidy would be to require manufacturers to open up device documentation once it goes out of support? None of these computers are unusable, they're just unusable with Windows after the cutoff date. This would be like how car makers in the EU are required to sell you spare parts. (Although not always the tools or fitting instructions to fit them).
The devices don't stop working, simply become unsupported.
My phone still works although it dropped out of support in 2017.
At most, vendors (not only Microsoft) could provide some security patches and satisfy the critics. Why does this have to be free support?
Will this proposal also apply to cars, refrigerators, etc?
I think there is a huge point being missed here.
Just because the OS is updated does not mean the software will be supported. Both need supporting for an amount of time that is appropriate.
If is very easy for the software requirements to also mandate turning hardware into landfill.
This maybe a bit of an edge case but a small kitchen studio I provide ad-hoc support for had an update to the design package recently. The PCs were on Windows 11 (full support not using a tool to make it work) but the design package now needed more RAM and a specific graphics card. That card was the wrong side of £700. The result is that we had to put larger DIMMs in due to the number of available slots and then replace the graphics cards. The old ones worked perfectly and had been in use for about 5 years. The software refused to install because they "did not meet the requirement" even though I was confident it would actually work. It is a sodding graphics card on a 3" monitor not a 72" wall mounted screen. There is only so much resolution available .
I am guessing they had done something funky with the rendering engine but instead of giving you an option to take a low (and perfectly acceptable quality) forced you to replace the card.
Sigh this would never work:
Vendor won't support for 15yrs so they will
a) Not sell you products only lease and then provide support up till you stop paying the toll and the toll is based on age so yep they are golden
b) 3rd party software will stop supporting WAY before the OS expires so expect zero help there.
c) Will sell but at a vast price greater than anyone can realistically afford.
d) Will move 90% functionality out of OS into 'applications' or 'addons' and then only support the core functionality (my favourite and common reason to upgrade).
...end software-driven obsolescence by introducing rules that guarantee long-term security and software updates for laptops – and ideally for anything with a plug or battery.
So, my laptop will be fine, but my desktop won't?
What's the point of a half-hearted solution? If you're going to go to the bother of introducing these regulations, at least do it properly. Or does "anything with a plug" cover, well, anything and everything else?
I'd be happy with paying for updates.
Note that update != bug fix If they ship code before it's ready and expect users find the bugs then they can't charge them when they get round to fixing it.
Note also that if they want me to pay for it then update == improvement, and a genuine improvement, not some annoying tinkering to make things worse.
In which case, you should be fine, because that's what Microsoft has done. They've got a paid update option for people who can't replace their hardware but still wants patches, in addition to various Windows 10-based versions like Windows 10 LTSC and Windows Server 2019. I don't particularly want to pay for either of those things, and I do think Microsoft's hardware cutoffs are unreasonable, but if paying for updates is sufficient, they have met that bar already with no petitions needed. The one in the article does not think the same way you do as it considers the $30 (unsure what conversion rate they use, but if it's the same one they use for Azure that's €25.50 or £22) unaffordable. If that's their basis, I do think they're calling for them to be free of charge.
They're charging to correct preexisting issues - this means the product was faulty. I'll be kind and assume they didn't know about the fault at sale, but that really doesn't matter.
If I buy a widget and it turns out to be faulty, the fix for that is free - or I get a full refund. That's the actual law this side of the pond.
For example, there are currently thousands of twelve year old cars getting free replacement airbags, and the car manufacturer is even liable for reasonable related costs until repaired.
If I buy a widget and it turns out to be faulty, the fix for that is free - or I get a full refund. That's the actual law this side of the pond.
If you buy a widget and it turns out to be faulty you are entitled to a replacement or suitable redress, the contract that enforces this is with the supplier, not the manufacturer.
In the first 6 months the onus is on the seller to prove that the customer has damaged the item, after 6 months this shifts to the buyer having to prove that the product was faulty. This applies for up to 6 years after the product is released with the entitled remediation reducing over that time.
If your 5 and a half year old widget breaks due to a manufacturing defect you're not entitled to all your money back as you've had 5 and a half years use out of it.
...and again... this contract is with the seller, not the manufacturer (which is why I buy my Apple gear from Apple, as their warranty support is really good).
For example, there are currently thousands of twelve year old cars getting free replacement airbags, and the car manufacturer is even liable for reasonable related costs until repaired.
This is because it is a critical safety issue.
There are also many defects that get fixed with a 'model refresh' that you would have to pay for. For example, E46 BMW 3 series have a design fault in the central locking mechanism that causes them to fail after time. The fix for this is an expensive replacement ECU, it is not free, as although it's a design fault, it manifests long after the 6 years mandated by law.
I'm not asking for updates. They sell me Z, keep out of my hair and don't break into my house and stop Z from working. I don't expect Kia to support my car, my local garage does that; I don't expect Gloworm to support my boiler, my local plumber does that; I don't expect Compressed Ceramic Products to support my roof, my local builder does that.
Yes, but your car, boiler and roof will get old because, well, time. And they will eventually break. At that point you'll need to fix them, somehow. So if Kia, your boiler manufacturer or the company that makes tiles for your roof stop producing the parts you need, you'll have to decide for a new car, boiler or a new roof. So, if you don't want to update your computer, you don't need to do anything.
No, it's because after a while the feature disparity creeps in, and it costs more money to keep stuff running on older OSs. If your customer base largely doesn't use that OS what's the point in wasting money supporting it?
Why would any company artificially limit their target market??? Because... they don't want profit??
How it's proprietary software stops that from occurring.
As you do not have the source code under a free license, you cannot go to anyone else to support the software - you are entirely dependent on microsoft.
A solution to solve the support problem could be to require that complete source code and installation information under a free license be published as soon as any OS is out of support (too bad microsoft is very good at pretending to release source code, when if fact they're released mostly proprietary software with only some source code provided).
"Dreamers always fantasize about getting things for free. You want 15 years of updates? Be prepared to pay for 10 of them...."
But a lot of updates aren't actually functional upgrades, which I agree you should anticipate posting for if you want them. A lot of updates are security fixes, or fixes for bugs that arguably the supplier has a duty to fix if you treat them as defects in the original product.
Debian kind of embodies the two track approach, but at a nation state level it could be a statutory requirement.
You can run 'Unstable', accept the risks, and enjoy the ride—I have, it was fun while it lasted, but when it came down to doing serious work...
'Stable' is as stable does: slow moving, boring, and exactly what you want when you don't want to be called out of bed at 3am because something has fallen over. Again.
Microsoft could easily run a long-term 'stable' version of Windows—call it what you like, how about 'Matt'—that is all about being boring as hell, and stable. Something that does evolve—slowly—with backward compatibility and stability as its core priorities.
Then they can do what the hell they like with the 'Shiny' version. Different priorities, different user base.
Wonder how it's going to be used by Microsoft etal against OpenSource
Debian, hey you need to post enough money into government bonds to guarantee that you will have developers around in 15 years to support every platform that Debian currently runs on.
Redhat, oh you're fine, you're IBM, IBM will obviously be around in another 100 years
"You could try that approach but I think you'd have trouble finding someone called Debian."
No, you wouldn't. Any of the three nonprofit entities that accept money on Debian's behalf, one of which is EU-based, are targets. That's the problem that came up when the EU tried putting in security requirements without talking to enough people who knew what they were talking about; they risked putting unrealistic requirements on everyone who wrote code, including open source developers. While those who do so on a purely volunteer basis might have escaped it, anyone taking money, operating a legal organization of any kind, or both would be easy to regulate. If you don't want that to happen, you need to consider it explicitly in the regulation to avoid having a default policy intended for companies applying to everything organized.
We could wait for the nation state to introduce statutory requirements.
Or... the developers who write applications (which users depend upon to get their work done) could unite around a single Linux distro. (Perhaps something stable and well supported like Debian or Rocky Linux)
And then, users and corporate buyers who have been scared away by the prospect of navigating hundreds of distros, dozens of GUIs, multiple filesystems et cetera, et cetera, can forget all of that and simply install the 'de facto' version of Linux that app developers and support companies have settled upon.
If the app developers kicked back a few percent of their profits to Debian (or whoever), then the devs who maintain the codebase can put food on the table, and the OS could be realistically maintained for years and years.
There are only a small handful of major Linux distros, not hundreds. There is one major GUI, Gnome, one minor one, KDE, and then a handful of niche GUIs which ship on niche distros. There are not dozens.
There are very few, if any at all, major open source applications which do not run on all major Linux distros.
The reason that MS Windows continues to have large sales has to do with its existing large legacy install base, something that isn't going to go away by offering an alternative.
I don't fully agree about your ranking of the size of GUIs, but in general, I think you are mostly correct. People choosing Linux have some choices they have to go through, but selecting among a few likely distro and DE candidates is something any competent IT department can manage. Those who aren't doing it have other, possibly better, reasons. Very little software will simply refuse to run on a different distro, so asking developers of desktop software to agree on one, famously not an easy question to get people to agree on, is also not a very useful fight to have.
>could unite around a single Linux distro.
There are only 2 meaningful distributions of the kernel, Linux - the proprietary one from kernel.org and GNU Linux-libre (and a bunch of other distributions with minor patches at most) - of with all happen to have the same SYSCALL, /sys, /proc & /dev interfaces and thus it doesn't really matter as to which one is installed.
Most programs are in fact rather programmed for the GNU OS and linked to GNU libraries like glibc, ncurses etc etc etc and not to Linux - meaning it the vast majority of software compiles and runs the same, on any GNU distro - meaning it doesn't matter what GNU/Linux distro you use.
>dozens of GUIs
The user should have the freedom to choose what GUI they want.
If the user wants GNOME, or KDE or xfce4 or i3 or mate (there is less than a dozen DE's to choose from as it happens.) - it's simply a matter of installing such DE's on any distro.
If the user is unsure as to what selection to make, they can select any GNU distro at random and then use the default DE.
>multiple filesystems
It doesn't matter what filesystem you use - as programs don't see any difference when those fopen() a file.
If you are unsure, you just use ext4 (most GNU/Linux installers default to ext4 unless you manually configure to use f2fs or whatever).
>can forget all of that and simply install the 'de facto' version of Linux that app developers and support companies have settled upon.
cr...app developers and support companies have already settled upon the GNU OS with some version of the kernel, Linux as the standard (although some people do not like the freedom and are developing the incompatible BusyBox/Linux) - while adding yet another GNU/systemd/Linux distro would simply add more choices as to which distro to install.
>then the devs who maintain the codebase can put food on the table
Debian developers who have the time to maintain the codebase don't seem to have any issues putting food on a table at the moment.
Considering that Debian is a proprietary OS now, I wouldn't lose sleep over the responsible Debian developers starving (but that won't happen).
Debian would only deserve funding if it was corrected to be free software and committed to the users freedom.
Compromise: either 15 years of OS updates *or* an unlocked bootloader and drivers/firmware provided so the hardware can be spoken to by a third-party OS. Just like you can install Linux on a Windows PC, the same needs to be possible with Apple Silicone Macs and smartphones. If you STILL want to lock down your hardware and make it impossible to install another OS, then you need to provide 15 years of support from the day you stop selling the device.
Simple as.
This, or something which has a similar effect, sounds reasonable. If you won't support hardware after a normal warranty period then you shouldn't be allowed to stop someone else from supporting it. If there are genuinely a significant number people who are affected by this obsolescence then somebody will come out with a Linux distro for it.
As for people who just want free stuff from Microsoft, I don't have a lot of sympathy for them. Windows was never free. If you don't like paying for it then don't use it.
I use Linux and prefer it, but I upgrade (at no charge) to the new Ubuntu LTS every 2 years when it comes out. People who want support for versions of Ubuntu older than 5 years can get it, but they have to pay Canonical for it, out to about 12 years or so.
The problem is not having to buy a new version, it's having to replace the PC also, even if it has enough power to run it. That never happened before but for very old models, of couse you could not run a 64 bit OS on 32 bit chips. While dropping old models could allow some code generation improvements and optimization, are they really needed when you dumbed down the UI to a mix of Win 3.1 and a mobe? Or is kt just to run AI to hoard more users' data?
> guaranteeing at least 15 years of software updates.
But this does not stipulate they must be free updates. So all that vendors have to do is ramp up the cost of updates over time. Until the cost of updating exceeds the price of a new box.
The software vendors can then say "It's not us, guv. Look! We're doing what the law requires. They are throwing away working kit"
What is worse is that once the model makes paid-for upgrades and fixes more common,then it soon becomes the norm. For everyone.
"Although Linux seems to be obsoleting old hardware like it’s going out of fashion too…"
Really? Most I've seen is most are no longer creating 32-bit builds. But even then, some still are. I replaced the now outdated Mint with AntiX on my ancient Asus Eee netbook. I suppose there may be abandoned drivers that I've not noticed if they don't affect me.
As opposed to forcing them to buy an entirely new computer, which even more people cannot afford?
Aside from that, the actual cost to Microsoft of doing this is ... zero, because they're already doing it, just refusing to allow consumers to have the patches they've made for the IoT edition.
Using proprietary corporate products is the tech equivalent of living under a dictatorship.
Dictators don't care what their subjects think, they do what benefits them.
Maybe the W10 support debacle is a lesson the world needed to get in order to feel the consequences of its Windows addiction.
The absence of massive Google Chromebook and iOS advertisement campaigns in the last 6 months is perhaps revealing the cozy relationships US Big-Tech companies maintain.
Electronics is highly reliable. Far more than spinning things or connectors [1].
Properly designed electronics [2] will last decades so my view of the arbitrary hardware requirements from M$ is it is just to help their 'partner companies' sell more hardware and the ecological effects (potential several millions of fully functioning devices going to landfill) be damned.
I agree with the commentard who took a position that if software forces a device to be obsolete (but it is still perfectly functional otherwise) then full documentation for the device in question should be made public [3]. That way, the devices can be re-purposed and still be useful and not end up as e-waste. I would not put any specific time limit on this; just a requirement that if the device in question is still functional at the hardware level then the documentation should be released if the software vendor has made their code base unavailable thereby making the system obsolete.
1. Connectors that are mated just once will last a long time. They are actually usually rated for the number of mating cycles and still be operational. Too many mating cycles wears the conductive layers and reduces the strength of the contact retention mechanism. This also depends on the type of connector and how it has been mated, assuming it has been properly rated for the level of current going through the contacts.
2. I have seen electronics in the high reliability sector that is well over 50 years old and still operational, albeit having had relatively minor repairs over the years. A lot depends on he environment as this is highly thermally dependent. A temperature rise of 10C yields the rule of thumb (very conservative) that it reduces the device life expectancy by 50%. More typically it is quite a bit less. Most of the things I have designed over the last few decades should last (for the electronics at least) for 40 years or more.
3.Not as difficult as some might assume. GPUs go obsolete after 1 or 2 runs at the fabricator (those runs are typically in the 100k+ to millions of units). The internal secret sauce has been deprecated so a 10 year old GPU should have no reason to be kept secret. The same goes for other high volume products such as CPUs (Intel always keeps their behind a NDA as do others).
The perfect time now to convince my wife I need a budget for a new PC. But I can't just dump fully functional piece of hardware that has served me well over 13 years and runs perfectly fine and fast with an SATA3 SSD both linux and W10. Besides I only need to replace the mb. RAM and CPU, while reusing the PSU and ATX chassis and storage. Wish more people were doing that to save the earth. Rufus solution does not work to upgrade unfortunately. The EU is right.MS approach is Artificial and should be Illegal. (AI).
"A Trusted Platform Module (TPM) is a specialized chip on your computer's motherboard designed to enhance security by securely storing cryptographic keys used for encryption and decryption. It ensures that your operating system and firmware are authentic and have not been tampered with"
After stating that, all M$ needs to ask is, Are you saying we should not mandate the use of a TPM, thereby limiting the security of the whole Windows ecosystem? Because Cyber crims are going to love that.
Then because the campaigners haven't thought of something that simple, they will probably say, "But you can make it secure in other ways", to which M$ only needs to ask, How? which they again haven't thought of, because they were taken aback by the first question and made an off the cuff reply.
It doesn't take much ton unravel an idiots grand idea, with common sense.
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