Well, I disagree... You can't just apply generic business logic to every business situation. There is something in economics called positive or negative externalities, e.g. side-effects that are caused by a product that might be harmful to someone or something.
A toothbrush is a product, and electricity produced by a nuclear power plant is a product, but the latter produces nuclear waste as a side-effect that will be causing a headache for our progeny for tens of thousands of years. So you can't just leave it up to the companies or the markets.
The recent economic and financial crisis is another case in point. Businesses (such as the banks) were happy to privatise the gains from being an essential service in society, but then expect to socialise the losses, relying on the taxpayer to bail them out, when things go pearshaped. They are the biggest socialists around when it comes to saving their arses.
Microsoft and its shareholders became fabulously rich by fundamentally changing the way the world operates. They literally changed reality. They have effectively changed the plumbing of the world. So when things start to go very badly wrong due to their past actions, and it is in their power to prevent things from going bad (by not abandonding support or not withholding solutions that are available and would really cost them very little, other than the opportunity cost of pretty much extorting money from those who can't upgrade for one reason or another), then they are responsible for the negative externalities they have apparently intentionally created.
-dr_andus
If one says that such arguments apply to this situation (which I don't believe it does- this is a product previously created that they had already set forth EOL), there is a stifling effect to attempting to make one corporation responsible for the benefits of its past. And what you posted doesn't dilute that statement - it reinforces it. Because by that, there was already a way out if the NHS was determined to use XP. Pay for their support. I don't believe in socialist leaning solutions to problems; you can't force them to support an ages old OS. Nor force someone to support anything. What you can do is (a) give incentives, or (b) pay for the support. Or if they are not willing to support it at all, have some sort of coalition support them.
And why the focus on Microsoft, and not the driver software companies that force them to stay on older hardware? Because MS is the known part of this equation? It would seem that those are the more culpable parties, i.e. if they sell such hardware/software combinations, that the source to support them should be in escrow against time/support necessary.
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