They did a little shy of ten years ago with VB6. People did indeed go batshit, but the government did not get involved.

Except that they provided a replacement and a migration path.

And you could keep on using VB6. I wouldn't be surprised if there still aren't thousands of business critical apps that still aren't using it.

Web Services are different in that when they're no longer supported, you can't use them.

Don't be surprised. I have seen a billion-dollar Brazilian megacorp using it for its core software, and several smaller (but still multimillion-dollar sized) companies relying on it as well (we have hundreds of VB6 apps at the insurance company I work for).

That was not a replacement but a completely different product with superficial simalarities and the same name. The path was not a migration path but a runaway path.

you are right, I should have rephrased when Microsoft did this. I remember those Slashdot threads well.

Not sure I follow. Microsoft discontinues products too. I would imagine that anyone who based a company off supporting and integrating with Frontpage got screwed.

yes but you can take an app from the 80s and still run it on Windows 7 today

With DOS emulator. There is no problem to run DOS app from 80s on Linux/MacOS/whatever with dosbox. By the way, dosbox is far better for some apps than DOS emulator from Windows XP/Vista/7.

you are not understanding the issue here. we are talking about the windows API - they have supported every aspect of it in a backwards compatible way since its inception.

read the Raymond Chen blog about how they used SimCity as a benchmark to test if their backwards compat was working. Marc Andreessen is even on the record as being an admirer of the Windows backwards compat work. they put a lot of work into it and placed a high value on it because they did not want to break developer trust.