For most software that can be sold in a box, without an attached cloud service, this approach works.
EDIT: Also some fraction would be using them on computers that literally haven't been upgraded or connected to the internet for a decade or more.
Even if they don't work on maintaining Office 2003 directly, they indirectly work very hard making sure every subsequent version of Windows does not break Office 2003.
It's backward compatibility if Word 2003 runs on the later Windows versions - like Windows 10 and 11. I don't know the answer to that, but I'm sure someone here does.
Unless they're also using computers and OSes from 2003 (spoiler -- they're not because those OSes wouldn't work with today's internet), those people are benefiting from untold efforts in the meantime to maintain their OS so it has that compatibility with 20 year old user space code.
That sweet sensation of being owner of what you paid for comes as a bonus.
Not receiving new features is VERY different from not receiving maintenance. It is wholly implausible to believe that there has been zero energy spent on keeping those codebases working in the past 10 years.
This is in fact how all software worked until, I don't know, about two decades ago? Things being patched was a big deal, a voluntary manual process, and didn't happen often. The update would even have a well-known name like "Service Pack 2".
The idea that all software must be constantly maintained is recent and the assumption that it is necessary is mostly self-imposed by the software business. Users don't share this assumption, and in fact on many products, updates are viewed mostly neutral to negatively, other than perhaps critical security updates on products that are used in connection to the internet or untrusted data.
You don't have to believe me, I imagine practically every reader on HN has the means to verify this for themselves.
> Plenty of people are using Word, Powerpoint, and Excel 2003 just fine
Are you claiming that a reasonable majority (for the sake of discussion) of this plenty of people are using Office 2003 on Windows XP machines??
I'd doubt it. More like there's plenty of people using old software in modern versions of Windows. The maintenance work, of course, exists and has been done indirectly, by Microsoft, in the development iterations of Windows itself.
https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list.php?vendor_id=...
So you can try it out but don't open any documents, or run it while connected to the net. You'd better also not insert any images. Have fun!
We could also have a post "World where bad people don't try to break your software"
Office 2016 is going EOL in two years.
That's from Microsoft themselves. They do not hide these facts or make it hard to find.
I find it mindboggling that a simple program like text processors have to be continually updated for decades. Just program it right once for god sakes.
