> Yeah, well, programs written for Linux 20 years ago also never change again. That's the whole point of closed-source binary-only programs...
This sentence is poorly phrased, but from the context it looks like they meant: programs written in the Windows 95 32-bit era are guaranteed to continue running without ever changing again
This needs the caveat of how well written those programs were: even with all the compatibility features modern Windows have, some programs did abuse the underlying APIs and had memory issues.
Also some programs at the time used "thunking" to mix 16bit and 32bit code (via DLLs) or simply used some DOS-based programs for some tasks even though the "main" program was 32bit, so those wont work with 64bit Windows. AFAIK Borland C++ 5 is a case of an application doing both, even though the main IDE is 32bit (and works in modern Windows), some of the helper stuff relies on DOS and Win16 code that doesn't work.
It'd be interesting if a company like Adobe open sourced everything at the 20 year mark.
Hobbyists and enthusiasts would love them for it.