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Windows XP Support Deal Not Renewed By UK Government, Leaves PCs Open To Attack
girlmad writes: The government's one-year £5.5m Windows XP support deal with Microsoft has not been extended, sources have told V3, despite thousands of computers across Whitehall still running the ancient software, leaving them wide open to cyber attacks. It's still unclear when all government machines will be migrated to a newer OS.
No need. What the summary doesn't cover (it's in the the actual article) is that that this was always the plan. The UK Cabinet Office arranged a blanket agreement for the extended support coverage that applied to all departments that needed it for a lower overall cost, making it quite clear right from the start that this contract would not be renewed, and it hasn't been. It's now up to the individual departments to decide whether or not they wish to expend some of their own budget on further extending their specific support with Microsoft on a per-department basis. If there's a story here, it's the number of PCs still running XP that are now outside support and which departments those PCs are in, but that's something the article doesn't cover.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
XP is 14 years old, and they gave plenty of warning when support would end. MS is under no obligation to support anything indefinitely. Seriously, why is your first response to sue? Is personal responsibility that hard?
Because it should be the case. Those government agencies had contracts with Microsoft since 2002 where they paid 50 dollars a year extra per computer to Microsoft after Windows XP was released in exchange for a safe/free upgrade path to the next version of Windows. Microsoft's part in the contract was to provide them a new version of Windows by 2003 or free XP support till the hardware dies. But that did not happen. Instead, Microsoft screwed them over and kept releasing service packs for XP instead. They never got a free upgrade to a new OS. Why should they pay for upgrades when Microsoft broke the contract?
As much as "teh internet" hates to hear this, Microsoft should be legally forced to abide by the contacts they signed and keep supporting Windows XP till the last contracted government agency replaced their hardware even if till 2030.
Microsoft hasn't been perfectly open about support ending last April.
Well, not quite open. They have consistently portrayed the situation as being one of support ending last April. The truth is, support for XP did not end last April, and was never planned to. What actually happened is that support went from being free (or at least included in the price of the product) to being a very expensive add-on.
Yes, but UK gov does not have any of those "smart as on Slashdot" IT pros. The UK gov outsourced all its IT to Big-Name-and-Big-Billing suppliers, and got rid of its own IT-literate employees. Now that the BNaBB suppliers have got UK gov over a barrel, the charges they invoice are extortionate. Remember the scandal over the lost CDs containing the entire Dept of Work and Pensions database (IIRC)? That was caused by the relevant dept being unable to write a simple SQL SELECT, and the supplier wanting £5000 for 20 minutes work.
"Cock Up Your Beaver" does not mean what you think. This sig is intended to clog filters and annoy do-gooders
Pretty much this. Most likely someone with a clue finally realised that as long as you have a working firewall and anti-virus that will block outside executables, your XP machine is quite safe from "omg internet viruses". Especially if like most computers in major organisation, it's also sitting behind a NAT.