First off, when I say "maintaining" I meant the configuration. When I say patching, I mean patching, not just trivially installing software updates. Spearchucker was trying to make this a look like a huge disadvantage over maintaining a Windows system, which it obviously is not.
Oh and as far as I'm concerned "3 to 5 years" is still pulled out of nowhere. You aren't mentioning any sources, just describing a really vague process that you think is "common". If you have a working, flexible system with which you can harness a huge continuous effort in developing the technology behind it for free, you aren't going to kill it off just because your enterprise clock says so.
Oh and as far as I'm concerned "3 to 5 years" is still pulled out of nowhere. You aren't mentioning any sources, just describing a really vague process that you think is "common". If you have a working, flexible system with which you can harness a huge continuous effort in developing the technology behind it for free, you aren't going to kill it off just because your enterprise clock says so.