a genuinely bad thing to have unpatched OSes with known security holes
If the OS is popular enough, once they get known, they will be fixed by the community if not MS. Look up "Windows 98SE Unofficial Service Pack" and "KernelEx". In fact the 98SE community is still very much alive... and has added support for a lot of things that MS didn't.
Gradually, I predict the same will happen with XP, and possibly 7 when MS stops supporting it.
If the OS is popular enough, once they get known, they will be fixed by the community if not MS. Look up "Windows 98SE Unofficial Service Pack" and "KernelEx". In fact the 98SE community is still very much alive... and has added support for a lot of things that MS didn't.
Gradually, I predict the same will happen with XP, and possibly 7 when MS stops supporting it.