Wed May 30, 2018 5:30 pm
There should always be a time frame in which software (alone or for a device) or the firmware for EOL devices/programs should no longer be available. Users need to be forced sometimes to upgrade to something supported and relevant. I'll give you an example (not Mikrotik but same type of case)
User comes into IRC channel says the system they are running a 10 year old version of the software died and it was urgent it come back up. My suggestion: Get the latest and spend the time fixing things to be current. Instead they spent 24 hours looking around for that 10 year old software and when they couldn't find it they used the EIGHT year old version and spent another 24 hours making that work. So now they are back up but still on eight year old, EOL'd software that is known to have bugs and security holes that are not fixed because, new versions. With no plans to upgrade because, hey the problem is now fixed.
No company should or really wants to support old software and hardware at a certain point. It means that time and resources have to be spent on it not to mention it requires *new* people to learn and retain knowledge of old stuff that isn't really needed anymore. Honestly, to me it also lets people become complacent in running out of date stuff because they can. Also, when someone announces they have been compromised and need help cleaning it up the first reaction by those helping is generally "Well why are you on EOL versions of this that are known to have this exact issue?" or "You know this was fixed in X release, why didn't you just upgrade then?".
The excuses of "My setup is complicated/highly customized/etc/etc/etc" just means (to me) you designed yourself into a corner with no roadmap or eyes on the future for changes, updates, etc.