I say this as an unapologetic user of all software closed source, Windows, Office, et al. I send files in .docx without asking if my peers even have Windows. I use Google Maps and closed source everything everywhere always.
But, even I cannot deny: if this were open source, many of the points leading up to this bug could be addressed without any help from the vendor.
I'm not sure thats fair. Yes you can, but I'm guessing you aren't the type of person to be caught running software 7 years after its EOL.
Or put it this way, Office 2003 was discontinued in 2007. Thats like running Debian 3.1 today (Sarge, 5 stable releases ago), and complaining about continued support. RHEL2.1 was EOL'd in 2008 (RHEL6 is the "old guard" now).
If you wouldn't expect continued support for Debian 3.1 or RHEL2.1 in 2015 there's, I don't see why its a problem for Microsoft or how it makes open source any better. Sure, yes you could patch Debian 3.1 yourself, but ultimately how fruitful is this effort, and how many people can be expected to to write kernel patches? Even if Microsoft said tomorrow Office 2003 was open source, how many individuals could you expect to have the know to patch their installations?
If it's Windows or Linux, then probably (hardware reqs haven't changed since 2010). Mac you're probably out of luck unless you use Wine.
Or pay a vendor to maintain it for you - I know Collabora will maintain versions of any age if you pay them to do so. May be cheaper to run a newer version for free and upgrade hardware/OS as needed, if you're insisting on the Mac version anyway.
You're not doing well on the rhetorical questions here ...
