As a former Reverb G2 v2 owner (who recently sold his setup at fire sale prices because of this sunsetting by MS) I am very disappointed by this move. Why brick a bunch of perfectly functional devices and create a massive amount of e-waste in the process?
Why not just freeze WMR in place, stop feature development, but keep the functionality around? I can't imagine bug fixing and driver updates cost Microsoft any substantial amount of resources, given how they pretty much dropped doing any of that after 2022.
It makes no sense to me and feels like management wanting to make a statement, more than a reasonable business decision. Especially since this move directly conflicts their stated sustainability goals and directives.
It's almost like the company is trying really hard to wash their hands clean of the HoloLens exec they fired for misconduct a while ago in the most scorched earth way possible or something.
I mean, a rainbow Gadsden flag makes some kind of sense if you forget all the recent associations. At face value it could be as simple as saying that you don't want the government to tread on your rights as an LGBTQ citizen. If you go one layer deeper and look at it as a symbol of the fight for freedom during the American revolution, it still works - Freedom for LGBTQ people to be who they are.