Re: If I had a Ford vehicle...
they'll recall cars even if they're 15 years old to fix damaged lightswitches or airbags
As a general rule, they only do this because of consumer protection or product liability laws in major markets, not out of any sense of duty or customer obligation. Software will remain a wild west for users and buyers until the same laws are extended to software. I'd guess in some markets the same laws do in theory already apply, but simply are not applied effectively, because when you're a tech company, all forms of law, tax, privacy, and compliance are things for other people that you can avoid.
If Microsoft were on the hook for the costs of malware exploiting code errors, you can be sure they'd have made a much better job of fixing the problems. They thieves are sitting on a cash pile of about $116 billion. Assuming 200m lines of unique code, ten minutes to review each and every line, $50k blended annual salary, it would cost about $1bn to fix the entire Windows code base. less than 1% of the cash they're sitting on.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
