When do you drop support for an old program version?

Question

.NET 1.1. IE6. Java 1.1. All of these are old ancient versions of software that still for some reason exist in organizations that are too scared to upgrade, don't like change, or follow the "If its not broken, don't fix it" principle.

But when do you drop support for such old versions of software? What determines when a platform is too old?

Answer 1

I generally go by what the first party considers End of Life: if the person who made the software won't support it anymore, there's very little hope for a third party to provide anything beyond a nominal level of support.

I do make exceptions for things that have exceptional market share (read: IE6), but once other, much larger companies axe their third party support, I follow suit. In the case of IE6, I stopped supporting it when Google stopped.

Answer 2

When you released it in 2001, it has multiple security flaws and bugs, it's universally loathed, ritually cursed, and your current version, which is three versions later, is in public beta.

Answer 3

... to add to your question, ... or have reasons because of which they cannot upgrade or change easily or at all (i.e. without disproportionately large costs, or because of technical reasons - think things which are made with a lifespan of 30-40 years).

... but to answer it, when there is no more a significant number of users who use it, and who are willing to pay for it (support). Otherwise, if one drops support for product X, another company will start providing it.

End of support usually comes because of several reasons:
- end of development (from the programmer's side, e.g. lack of funds, unwillingness to port to another platform/OS/compiler, death of programmer)
- change of factors on which the programmer cannot influence (e.g., change of platform, hardware unavailability)
- end of need for the product (i.e. it is no longer sought by the market)

Answer 4

We have an enterprise app that is almost quarter million lines of C# code written in .NET 1.1. Microsoft has made a lot things in .NET 1.1 obsolete. As Bill said, the resources needed to make the leap is not justified easily. Usually end of life notifications gets some attention.