Or they could have done the same as many paid programs: charge money for updates. Instead they choose to do the opposite, which makes one wonder how they came to the conclusion that not updating is more desirable for their users.
Paying to not update is usually called "extended support." I belive it's not that rare and I think in enterprise even more common than in consumer software.
The reason, I believe, is that upgrading creates cost for the user, while maintaining older versions creates cost for the maintainers.
Extended support implies them having to actually support something, providing security updates for it and taking extra care of the version. Docker could charge for extended support, charge for a LTS version, and even turn features they'd would otherwise deprecate into premium features.
This here is merely attempting to prevent the user from running an unsupported version on their own machine. Software tends to be about "solving user's problems". The only problem this "anti-feature" is solving is one of its own creation.
1. Pay for updates (or "Enterprise" features), which implies there's extra value to be had moving up (the new leased car every 2 years model)
2. Pay for extended support after official EOL (the "does anyone know Cobol?" model)
3. New version, support DD-dates for older versions, stuff may stop working and you are on your own (That Windows ME box with all your MP3s in the basement)
This situation is some sort of forced #2. I don't know of any company that has done this without still offering #3.
> Paying to not update is usually called "extended support."
I haven't seen anyone demanding extended support, people just want to click "No" without having to pay for that privilege. No support, no extra sauce, just a button for the users who don't want to risk breakage in that moment.
Considering how updates randomly break things and wreck volumes and images my only assumption is that this is ransomware similar to how Windows updates operates
