So, that sure didn't take very long...

It wasn't even two weeks ago that Microsoft ended support for Windows 7 (for all except their biggest, richest Win7 customers, that is), claiming that we would never receive another update ever again. There was even a full-screen nag screen, because of fucking course there was. Blogs and tech news sites were full of nothing except doom and gloom for Win7 users, telling us all that the sky was falling, and only Windows 10 offered any shelter.

And so, naturally, Microsoft have already announced that they'll be issuing another patch for Windows 7 in February. Huzzah!

As reported by The Verge:

It’s an embarrassing bug, introduced just as Microsoft was supposed to stop supporting Windows 7. It also left Microsoft with the dilemma of introducing an obvious bug that customers would then have to pay to get fixed.

While Microsoft initially said it was working on a Windows 7 fix that would only be available “for organizations who have purchased Windows 7 Extended Security Updates (ESU),” the software giant changed its mind overnight and now says the fix will be available to everyone running Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1. Bizarrely, this means Microsoft has to extend its Windows 7 support to fix a bug it has introduced.

So, let's begin with the obvious: Patching a bug for free that was introduced with what was supposed to be the last-ever free patch was obviously the right thing to do, and it's good that Microsoft did it. I would have been more impressed if they had announced this as their decision first, rather than announcing that they planned to charge to fix a bug that they'd introduced to the OS at literally the last possible minute, but they did something similar with the WannaCryptor patch, too: that patch was originally not going to be available to users of Windows XP unless they were still paying for extended support, but Microsoft eventually patched XP for free along with 7, 8/8.1, and 10.

Microsoft's action also follows another important element of that previous precedent: it patches an out-of-service OS which isn't supposed to receive any further support, this proving that Microsoft will indeed still be supporting Windows 7 if need be.  The fact that this patch had to be developed anyway, due to the number of large volume customers who are still paying for Windows 7 support, basically means that releasing the patch for free costs Microsoft nothing extra; it might even gain them a few goodwill points among Win7 users.

But there's no way around the other edge of this sword: patching Win7 again, just weeks after claiming that Win7 would receive no further patches, does nothing to goad those users into adopting Windows 10. It might even undercut demand for those large-volume Win7 extended support contracts. It is, in a word, awkward.

As a Windows 7 user myself, I wasn't feeling any particular urgency to switch operating systems; Win7 only got patched monthly, anyway, so the lack of those patches wouldn't normally start to matter until a couple of months had passed, giving me lots of time to tackle the switch-over to Linux... and I will be switching over to Linux. Eventually. But I have to say, having watched Microsoft walk back their categorical declaration that Win7 would receive no further support, less than two weeks after that support was supposed to finally end, I'm not feeling any pressure about that.