The “when transporting a large number of people” is quite a caveat. Sure ok high saturation of public transport / walkable cities is probably achievable with high population density, but in rural / regional areas it’s just not possible.
Yeah look, everyone has to find their own way, I’m not trying to make the case that catch & release is going to be better for everyone, and there’s certainly a case to be made for archiving.
The thing that eventually got me was maintaining a big raid array. Lots of heat, power, drives dying every now and again. When it only takes a few minutes to download something and I never go near my bandwidth quota (or it’s unlimited maybe) going to catch & release made a lot of sense. I’m not religious about it but I generally delete things after I’ve listened / watched.
Its incredibly wasteful, but there is another perspective.
When that microscope was purchased, it formed part of someone’s budget throughout its service life. Support would have been guaranteed for that service life, but that life has now expired.
The company isn’t obligated to assist buyers beyond that service life, and doing so would eat into current and future profits.
There is not a single commenter (nor downvoter) in this thread who would open the source for that microscope if they owned that microscope company.