eWEEK: “A new research paper to be released on Thursday is warning those companies still running Microsoft Windows 98 that they face an increased risk of a network security breach when Microsoft retires the product at the end of this year.”

Déjà vu? Kinda. The vital difference here is, because Red Hat Linux is an open-source product, community-supported initiatives like the Fedora Legacy project and companies like Progeny (with its recently-announced Transition Service) can step up to continue supporting the product even after the original vendor has abandoned it. Who will step up to continue supporting the vast Windows 98 installed base and provide ongoing security updates? Plenty of communities and/or companies would no doubt be interested in filling the void, as there is clearly a market need, but with proprietary platforms, it’s simply not a possibility. When the original vendor wants a product to die, for whatever reason, it dies, the needs of its users be damned.