<i>The supported lifespan of expensive software is generally spelled out.</i><p>Unfortunately that is far from universal. We have several software products with permanent licences that had 4+ figure costs, and none of them gave any specific indication of support at all. Often you only get these things set out in writing with an expensive support contract on top of your original purchase. However, if you&#x27;re spending literally thousands on a piece of software and that software proves to be fundamentally defective within a reasonable period, I think you should be (and in many cases, you probably legally are) entitled to fair compensation if the defect isn&#x27;t fixed and any significant resulting damage made good.<p><i>If you continue using the software after support has ended, you are by definition unsupported and I&#x27;d say absent any malicious damage or major negligence on the part of the manufacturer, any issues are on you.</i><p>Perhaps, but I&#x27;d argue that artificially nerfing the product so despite its permanent licence it can&#x27;t actually be used after a certain period of time <i>does</i> constitute &quot;malicious damage or major negligence&quot;.<p><i>You can&#x27;t buy a car and then expect that the manufacturer will be on the hook for an engine failure after the warranty period unless the failure is caused by major negligence or malicious design. Perpetual support is not something any other industry provides.</i><p>You&#x27;ve chosen an unfortunate example there. Safety recalls <i>are</i> pretty much an indefinite obligation in the auto industry, at least in my country. I have recent first-hand experience of this, and someone who apparently didn&#x27;t ensure the appropriate remedial work was carried out on some vehicles and so left a potentially fatal design problem unfixed is about to get formally investigated by the relevant government department.<p>It seems to me that software developers can&#x27;t reasonably be expected to provide indefinite, free of charge support in areas like compatibility with new hardware&#x2F;OS&#x2F;protocols that evolve over time. That compatibility probably wasn&#x27;t part of the original deal, unless this kind of support was explicitly included probably for some fixed time period.<p>However, for issues that are clearly fundamental defects in the product, such as serious security vulnerabilities, privacy leaks, data corruption bugs, or complete inability to use the product because something like an activation server is no longer available, it seems reasonable to me that we should treat these closer to the way we handle safety recalls on cars. Want to turn off your activation server after a couple of years? No problem, but you&#x27;re on the hook for either patching out the activation mechanism for all your customers or compensating them for the functionality they&#x27;re about to lose after they already paid for it.