Fact of the matter is whether it needs to die or not is irrelevant as it's still got a huge install base Worldwide and i predict you'll see more of this...whether it's right ...or wrong.
I didn't say whether it was right or wrong. I'm saying this is just delaying the inevitable, and more importantly of anybody thinks this will affect consumers of XP outside of those businesses it's wishful thinking.
The very same governments did the exact same thing for Windows NT4 and 2000; they delayed, and they delayed, upgrading their images to a new system, all the while dismissing it as "ahh, Microsoft will totally change their mind". Then when MS pulled the plug on win98SE in 2004 they scrambled and basically ended up purchasing a extended support contract from MS.
For governments and businesses, the only thing that matters is whether it works and they can use it. For governments, the main prerequisite is that it can play solitaire. This is vital, because shooting elastics around is wasteful and elastics cost money too, and employees need something to do while they force people phoning to listen to terrible music for excessively long wait times.
For businesses, of course, the only thing that matters is the bottom line.
Personally, for example, my company makes software for businesses. It wasn't until recently that it started to get replaced.
The software that has the largest install base is over 30 years old. It is Text-based and is handled at terminals; the terminals have since been upgraded to Windows and use a Terminal Emulator, but the server is still running a system that is over 25 years old. Our software has been updated itself, but the system is still ancient; it's all written in BASIC, etc.
So the question is, "why don't they upgrade".
Because it works. There have been three efforts to upgrade the system so far; the only one that got anywhere was this one. All the previous attempts were met with harsh criticism and got very little acceptance from customers. This is because the changes directly affected how their business would work. They had staff who were familiar with our system as well as the idiosynchrasies; and so the cost of retraining them was high; the new software lacked a few features that were specific to the old OS and didn't really have an equivalent, and so on.
The only thing that changed their minds was when the networking stack of the ancient OS it all runs on started to croak and died inexplicably for no good reason, taking down their entire server for hours at a time, to the point where they ended up turning away customers. That suddenly piqued their interest in the new system which didn't have those problems. Fact is that a company is only going to consider changing from one piece of software to another if that new version will affect their bottom line in a positive fashion.
The same thing applies to Windows XP. For the same reason companies are still using THEOS Corona in 2014, companies will continue to use Windows XP.
Consumers, however, have ad 12 years to switch; it's a case of simply not wanting to learn a new system, or pay for a new system, or whatever the case may be; and that is and always has been their choice. For businesses it's a choice to- but it has better motivations than "we don't like it" because switching will actually affect their bottom line.
