1. why would anybody want to keep 10.04 alive?
2. do you think the type of people who stubbornly continue to use 10.04 would know/care enough about security to seek an alternative source for security patches?
edit: should maybe add why this pisses me off: just logged into a production server running 12.04, default install apache and updates _turned off_. the owner looked confused (and slightly bored) when I explained the problem to him.
I do think that's important to recognize that there is model under which an organization can. I'd even argue that it's a more "free market" than that of single-source proprietary software, too. If there's a market in maintaining non-proprietary software someone will pop up to fill it (even if it's just a lone-wolf consultant). With proprietary software that can't happen.
Whether or not an organization or individual chooses to maintain software is an orthogonal concern to the model under which they maintain it. Even when there is a free market for maintenance some will opt to eschew maintenance. Personally, I'd like those organizations to pay the cost by way of data loss, downtime, going out of business, etc.
I'm not overly worried about it. I think traditional regulatory and risk management will eventually catch up. Someday (hopefully sooner, rather than alter) businesses won't be able to get basic insurance policies unless they can prove they're doing IT maintenance, for example.
Even if you pay money for the windows 10, it is unlikely to even start on the hardware that XP ran on. Not only will the people have to go through the budget to pay for the software, but now you need a full upgrade plan.
To put this in a concrete example. If a hospital had a check-in system running 12.04 they could just take someone internal from IT and go and fix it. If it was Windows XP then they need to go through finance, then get a offers from competing companies, fitting the upgrading into the budget, and last have people installing it in each of the hospitals entrances. The first case has a project length of days and the other of months and in worst case years.
> Assuming these hospitals keep updating and do not get stuck at Ubuntu 10.04.
It's that simple.
If someone wants to continue using outdated software, they will want to keep supporting it. Free software lets them do that. Proprietary software specifically forbids it.
So, 1. because there is a community outside of a major corp who are active, so it isn't a burden on Canonical. 2. yes? see 1.
Should any IT professional not have upgraded from 10.04? No. It's free to upgrade, unlike Win which, remember, isn't a single upgrade, licensing is per user.
I am so happy that win10 patches are mandatory despite all the whining. In fact, I want them to take it one step further and adopt the ChromeOS update model.
