> It forces you to develop in ways that are not natural for people that work with hardware

My employer still upgrades 10yrs old TV boxes just fine. (Rocking Linux 5.4 LTS, launched on 2.6)

It is not natural for companies whose business model is selling hardware. Or course their business incentive is not to make long-term support!

But my employer's business model isn't about selling hardware, but a service, hence the incentive to upgrade perfectly working hardware.