most very old software will depend on many other parts so you anyway often have to run it in a vm with a old Linux kernel + distro release or similar
and if not, you can always put it in a container in which `/var/lock` permissions are changed to not being root-only. Which you probably anyway should do for any abandon ware.
That’s true and compatibility is a grace. Software shall not need every month an update. I sign of its quality.
Is this case, usage of /var/lock was clumsy for a long time. And not cleaning up APIs creates something horrible like Windows. API breaks should be limited, to the absolute minimum. The nice part here is, that we can adapt and patch code on Linux usually.
On the other side Linux (the kernel), GLIBC/STDLIBC++, Systemd and Wayland need to be API stable. Everybody dislikes API-Instability.
and if not, you can always put it in a container in which `/var/lock` permissions are changed to not being root-only. Which you probably anyway should do for any abandon ware.