
Dropbox ends XP support with only a month's notice - Mithaldu
https://www.dropbox.com/help/9227
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oliwarner
I think we're at a point with XP where any assumed support should be taken
with a big handful of salt. If it works, that's great for you but don't rely
on it.

XP has awful TLS/SSL support. No SNI (that's what allows you to host more than
one domain/certificate on a single IP), ancient ciphers. This sort of
encryption stuff is the bread-and-butter of Dropbox's service and having to
maintain an in-client replacement to supplant the host's must be exhausting.

That's well before you consider that allowing XP machines to keep puffing
along makes the internet a worse place. They get no updates, they're infected,
rotting, smouldering sludge heaps just another day away from joining a botnet
if they aren't already part of one. Third party software on them is starting
to rot too. This all puts the rest of us at risk.

XP is the passive smoke of the computing world. Kicking it off the internet is
the best result for everybody.

Edit: That isn't to defend the way Dropbox has done this. Just checked the
Wayback machine and their minimum requirements page has been bleating on about
supporting XP right up until now. They should have removed it from being
officially supported when Microsoft did in 2014.

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Freak_NL
Why would Dropbox bother doing more than give a month's notice for an OS that
is already unsupported by its vendor? I'm surprised they are giving that much
notice in advance.

If you still use XP, you either have to for some legacy piece of software
controlling some piece of expensive hardware, where it lives in some sandboxed
environment (i.e., no public internet), or you are a government paying
Microsoft through the nose for extended support contracts. If you really need
Dropbox in that latter case, you can either afford to pay Dropbox an
outrageous amount of money for that extended support (I am sure they are more
then willing to if the price is right), or you just have to deal with it.

Anyone running XP should by now be aware that things will break down at
awkward times and with little warning.

~~~
oliwarner
I generally agree but it sets a worrying precedent. "Today they came for XP
and I said nothing" etc.

A public deprecation plan would be better next time.

~~~
Freak_NL
But there was: Microsoft ended support for XP with a more than amiable
deprecation plan. Anyone running XP after the final deadline knew they were on
borrowed time, and any Dropbox customers remaining on XP after that were on a
grace period.

How many people still use XP with Dropbox on an internet connected computer?
And how many of those are paying customers? For Dropbox it makes no sense to
go with more than what they are doing now. Why spend a lot of money in
postponing the inevitable? It won't net them any returns, whilst dropping
supported for a legacy OS does have tangible benefits (e.g., reduced build
times, less (untestable) code, less support).

If you really need to run software on an unsupported, unpatched OS, you are
way out of the realm of of-the-shelf supported software. You need a custom
agreement with the vendor to get that level of support, and you would have
gotten ample warning on the impending loss of support with such a contract.

It would be different if Dropbox axed support for Windows 8 with only a month
of warning, even though they are fully within their rights to do so.

~~~
oliwarner
You're missing the point. Yes old buggy, unpatched software is awful. I know
that. I _SAID_ that a few posts ago. The problem here is about how Dropbox
communicated with their customers. Or —as in this case— how they didn't
communicate.

Dropbox has known about the death of XP from 2014. It shouldn't have taken
them over two years to remove XP from being a headline supported operating
system. They should have said something months ago. They're the service
provider. The onus is on them to communicate this stuff in good time.

Notice is important because organisations (of all sizes) have legacy systems
that can take years to migrate to newer operating systems. Long notice about
when your software dies allows you to plan. 30 days notice is going to ruin
August for some people.

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chompers
This is inaccurate. I got an email back in April (4 months ago) letting me
know about the deprecation. And I've gotten a reminder or two since. Maybe you
missed the other notices?

