When we purchase a given product, it's reasonable to believe that the manufacturer of that product is going to support it, and even more to the point, when that manufacturer is not just your typical going concern but actually has sales, let alone profits, in the billions of dollars, it is fair to assume that the product being purchased is going to continue to be supported through thick and thin. Regrettably, this nation has determined that certain companies don't need to have imposed upon them statutory support requirements, which companies such as Microsoft and Intuit thereby take advantage of via the software purchased by consumers, which signifies that after some arbitrary period of time the said product has reached its end-of-life support. The upshot of this being the case is that software that was once purchased and still works necessitates that those who desire to continue to use those products with support be replaced with the purchase or the rental of the newest or replacement version of that software, which quite frankly is not consumer friendly.
Unfortunately, software enterprises in America don't feel an obligation to faithfully support their customer base, under the mistaken notion that they have the right to fleece their customers more than once, even when those same customers are satisfied with the product that they currently have and do not desire to update or replace it because that product still functions at an acceptable level to them.
It is disappointing that this government will not properly regulate these companies that do not stand behind their products or, at a minimum, provide some sort of support that extends the end-of-life for these products, whether done directly by that company or subcontracted to another company. The bottom line is that the amount of money which would need to be devoted to supporting older products is probably not only going to be minimal, but through that support, might even be profitable, when support encourages customers to upgrade or to replace older products, and provides to the consumer the reasons why the newer product is better or more robust and so on.
After all, in an age in which we find that the consolidation of competing companies is approved by this government again and again, it needs to be taken into fair consideration that there needs to be some reasonable accommodation made by these software companies that necessitates that they do a far better job of supporting their customer base, especially when we consider that people have budgets along with expectations whenever they purchase a product, and one of those expectations is that a working product will not age out, which thus necessitates additional money being spent to get a replacement of what essentially is the same product, but in a different guise.
When it comes to products being sold, there is an ethical obligation of the seller to support and to maintain those products, without the consumer having to suffer some sort of forced obsolescence of that product, and the least that these companies need to do is that when purchased, the end-of-life date is fully disclosed from the get go, as contrasted to it just simply occurring at their discretion, which may have a lot to do with those companies finding a relatively easy way to "goose" sales, and thereby to cheat those that made good faith purchases.