Dropbox and winXP – the ultimate case of corporate arrogance?
They don’t have to “support” anything. They could just let you continue to run the same program you already had, surely?
There are probably a million mission-critical computers around the world still running XP.
Found this
On my machines I did not have to do 2) or 3), it seems.
That should prevent the app automatically updating itself to a non-working version. Then we may still need a way to fake the OS version. This has already been done in the Mac world.
Peter wrote:
hey don’t have to “support” anything. They could just let you continue to run the same program you already had, surely?
Companies want to develop their software further and sometimes need to update their communication interfaces with the client applications. What they usually do is they make the new interface version backward compatible so that old client versions are further supported. However with time this adds a huge amount of otherwise unneeded complexity so at some point they might decide to cut the backward compatibility. I am talking now on the server side, i.e. they might kill the bits and pieces that allow your older Windows XP client to communicate with them. So even if you keep the application from updating, it will probably not work any more. This is what happened with ICQ, Skype, Facebook chat, etc.
It is also clear why they don’t want to support Windows XP any more – there are multiple elements in the newer versions of Windows which you cannot use if you want to support XP. So the choice is to either use old technology even for the new Windows versions, or cut the old version completely (or branch the development which is a nightmare). As XP is not sold or supported by Microsoft any more and its usage is declining constantly, their solution is a valid one. If I were in charge, I would also kill Vista directly, having in mind that it is not particularly popular and is also pretty old already.
Peter wrote:
There are probably a million mission-critical computers around the world still running XP.
That is valid for big sluggish organizations like banks and insurance companies (and maybe airports still running faxes) but it is definitely not true for the client base of Dropbox which includes people thinking about cloud solutions, mobile phones and tablets. So cutting out 2-3% of their users but reducing their maintenance and development costs with the tenfold of that is very justifiable.
Is there anything in the DB API which is XP specific?
I don’t think so. Not in the public one.
Going back some years, the early smartphones had multiple (unofficial) DB clients. Symbian had several e.g. Cutebox. And Cutebox still works… you just can’t login into a new account with it. My Symbian 808 still works – going on Ebay now. So the main part of the API has never actually changed, which makes the explanations for the 2015 moves to cut out the older Mac OSs a lie also.
Windows never AFAIK had unofficial DB clients. However I know the public API is OS independent because I have just run a project at work involving pushing stuff to DB. The machine doing it runs no DB software at all. We could go on and develop a DB client just like the current Windows one… The only time you need the DB client is if you want background auto sync and you don’t want to write a lot of code, but DB auto sync is really sub-optimal performance-wise.
So I don’t see any “support” requirement at the DB end – unless their Windows client is using some undocumented API and they hacked it so it works only with some versions of Windows.
This isn’t at all like e.g. running a website which presents complex pages and needs to support IE4.
So, to me this seems just a gratuitous corporate-arrogance move. Possibly, driven by commercial factors connected with links with other companies who in turn may have reasons to move in this direction. You can get extra DB storage space if you link your DB account with stuff like facebook. There is a website which lists a whole load of these ways.
It doesn’t have to do anything with the API. The XP specific things might be as benign as new UI style which is supported by .net framework 4.6 but not from 3.5 (the last one running on XP). So again the choice is we either move to 4.6 and forget about XP, we stay with a 6 year old version 3.5 or support two versions.
And the change in the communication might be something old that they are going to remove.
What I am trying to say is that this is a valid business decision and any company takes such ones at some point or another. Of course you can try to keep your version (they will probably not even upgrade yours automatically) and see if it works further. If you are lucky, it will.
A question for you though: Why are you still running XP?
And another one from me: I also have a VM with XP for legacy software, i.e. software which does not run on newer versions 
Even if the API itself might not have platform specific stuff, the transport layers might. Most often, some encryption protocols which evolve, and if you want to keep to the state of the art, you will over time switch off older protocols (like SSL) or change some details (like ciphers etc.) that make older implementations no longer work with what you have on the server. So they might very well honestly face the choice between re-implementing their own TLSv1.2 implementation for XP, or leaving gaping holes in the encryption of their servers, or discontinuing support of an older OS.
My choice would also be to discontinue supporting a system when it’s used by less than 5 % of my users and it would require substantial investment, where you don’t even know for how long this will be good until you hit the next roadblock.
It’s probably not the API to the database, but securing the communication. The libraries supplied with WinXP don’t support TLS 1.2. TLS 1.1 has security problems and TLS 1.0 is exploitable right now. TLS 1.0 is not considered secure, and the writing’s on the wall for TLS 1.1. Older MacOS doesn’t support TLS 1.2 either (and if you go far back enough, still only supports SSL which is so insecure you could drive a supertanker through the insecurities).
To continue supporting XP with a secure connection, Dropbox would have to add some third party library to support TLS 1.2 and this will add costs for supporting their “retrocomputing” users.
Older systems not supporting TLS 1.2 is a major pain in the arse for any service that cares about security. For Dropbox, they will fail audits if they are supporting insecure TLS/SSL versions, and this will make them unacceptable to customers who require a certain level of security.
Of course you can try to keep your version (they will probably not even upgrade yours automatically) and see if it works further
Their email says they will actually log you out and terminate the facility on that date.
It’s easy to block updates of the windows app. It turns out mine has not auto updated for a long time anyway (auto updates are not configurable) but I blocked it anyway in the registry.
Why are you still running XP?
I use a computer as a toolbox to do work on, and have lots of different tools in it 
If Win7 installed over the top of XP I would change to it. The only cases one could install over the top and it worked was NT3.51 over win3.1 (20 years ago) and now win10 reportedly does it, but win10 breaks a lot of older programs. Win8.x is horrible.
I also have a VM with XP for legacy software, i.e. software which does not run on newer versions
Various performance and compatibilty issues. I had an XP VM on a win8 machine. It worked in a very basic way.
I have come across about 3 apps of relevance to me which need win7+ and I don’t actually need any of them.
To continue supporting XP with a secure connection, Dropbox would have to add some third party library to support TLS 1.2 and this will add costs for supporting their “retrocomputing” users.
That would be a valid reason but does DB run over an encrypted link? I don’t think so, else why would the ancient Symbian clients e.g. Cutebox still work?
But, more to the point, DB have not given this as a reason. They just say they will cut you off on a given date.
Reading about this, a lot of people will move to google drive. Microsoft’s skydrive/onedrive is going to be the same dead end.
One just cannot support old OS forever, especially for consumer products. The cost of maintenance is disproportionate to the number of remaining number of users.
And if you look at the mobile phone scene, a lot of new iPhone and Android phones are not supported by recent versions of the respective OS. For example the newest version of iOS supported on iPhone 4 is 6…
So at some point you just need to move on, buy new hardware or upgrade your OS if you can. Who wants to be running an OS which is vulnerable to attacks because no longer maintained?
I don’t know about everyone else but I don’t pay for my use of dropbox so I guess it is up to them how they support their free product.
