"There's a reason education sucks, and it's the same reason that it will never, ever, ever be fixed. ... Because the owners of this country don't want that. ... They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. ... They want obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run their machines and do the paperwork, and just dumb enough to passively accept ..." -- George Carlin
This happens repeatedly outside the startup world as well. The company I work for has relied on technology that Microsoft developed, supported, and subsequently walked away from. That is the nature of both business and technology.
This was also mentioned in passing on the Software Engineering Radio Podcast that they did with Jonas Boner. It came up in the context of discussing Mist and what that word means in German.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GseyaEibb_4