I doubt that any of those would ever be an issue. Security issues would be handled by the newer OS that the VM is running on.
"There’s no way your model would keep XP profitable. It’s ancient, way past time to kill it, anybody that still has a business need to keep it needs to hoard hardware for it, or make the switch to VMs."
I never said it would be profitable......but it would let customers who have VERY EXPENSIVE HARDWARE (like that $1MM++ superconducting NMR) that cannot run with newer OS's keep that hardware up and running, and keep those customers buying NEW COMPUTERS with the NEW OS as customers.
I know of some scientific equipment that only runs on NT4 SP5. The vendor has been out of business for a long time. Evidently the equipment can still be bought used and there are 3rd party techs around that support the system as is. Same thing with some laser milling equipment. That vendor is out of business and only runs on W2K. In those cases you just keep backup computer hardware and image files on hand.
That paragraph isn’t about it on a VM, it’s about your idea of them keeping all the OSes available for download for a fee. That has the OSes running straight up, which means they’ve got to be supported and patched and everything else.
If it wouldn’t be profitable there’s no reason to do it. MS is a business, they exist to make money, period. Customers that have very expensive hardware that can’t run the new OSes have had a long time to figure hoard equipment and copies of XP to keep that setup going. Nobody is forcing them to uninstall XP, they’re just not making patches for it anymore. If they want to be on new computers then they need to get with the OEMs and figure out why they can’t run the new OSes and fix it.