Author: Wladimir 2014-04-17 07:27:38
Published on: 2014-04-17T07:27:38+00:00
In an email thread on April 16, 2014, Wladimir Palant discussed the possibility of dropping support for Windows XP in his software due to security concerns. However, he noted that it would be a waste of time and somewhat arbitrary to do so. He also mentioned that the client could still run without trouble on Windows 2000. The software currently uses the _WIN32_WINNT define with a value of 0x0501, which makes Windows XP the lowest version that it will run on. It would be easy to bump this value up to Windows Vista (0x0600), but doing so would cause the software to outright refuse to run on Windows XP without providing any helpful messages. Palant believed that it made sense to show a message informing users that support for XP would be removed eventually. When he asked for advice on the matter, however, he received responses that were mostly unrelated or paranoid banter about manipulating users. While there is a thin line between being helpful and being seen as manipulative, Palant believed that the responses went over the top, comparing the proposed message to in-browser banners. Despite these concerns, Palant decided to close the issue and take no further action, though he did stop testing on a Windows XP virtual machine.
Updated on: 2023-06-08T19:48:29.714919+00:00