Most software manufacturers will give free patches and hotfixes for a pretty long time. They won't give you the new version for free but they'll gladly update the old one.Microsoft, for example, gives free updates for five year old versions of Windows. That's beyond the warranty period of most computers which is usually 1-3 years.I can still download updates for NT 4.0 from their windowsupdate website. Windows 2000 and XP are still supported, IIRC.Sun Microsystems still provides updates for old versions of its Solaris operating system, as old as version 2.6 which was released somewere around 1997 I believe.
