> Bose should not receive praise for this move. Bose only took this action after community backlash.

They received the backlash, they responded to it by properly addressing the criticism and doing the right thing. It should be praised. Especially since it wasn't some PR-centric damage control, but an actual direct address of the specific points their original approach was criticized for.

Compare Bose's response to that of Sonos (another large techy audio brand). Sonos had an absolutely massive backlash recently (within the past few years iirc) in regards to deprecating software support for their older speakers that I'd read about everywhere (including HN) for months and months.

Afaik, it didn't lead to Sonos doing the right thing in the end (unlike the scenario at hand here), despite the online outrage being way more widespread than in the Bose's case.

> Bose should not receive praise for this move.

Remind me of any other vendor in recent history that end of lifed a hardware product and then open sourced it whether they got backlash or not. Because I can’t think of a single one.

So yes, Bose absolutely deserves praise.

Don't punish the behavior you want to see. Would we rather they defaulted there? Sure. But it's arguably an even better signal to see that they're willing to listen to their customers even when there is no direct financial incentive for them.

I've got a simple formula in life for when people do things beneficial to me: I praise them for it and encourage them to keep it going. If someone does things antagonistic to my interests, and then corrects course in reaction to objection, they can be sure they're going to be rewarded. This has worked for me.

If your belief is that some other tactic works, then I can see why you'd do that. For my part, carrot + stick has always worked better than stick + more stick.

Well they still did it, thus praise (though less effusive than if they had just done it initially).

Bose: does something bad. People: complain. Bose: undoes what they did and does something slightly better. You: complain.

I'm not sure I get the logic here.

Slowly but steadily I'm comprehending why companies are getting tired of some people. No matter what companies do, people will always complain. Don't get me wrong, there's always room for more improvement, but a slight complement for their slight improvement won't hurt anyone + a change in tone from complaining to suggesting improvements would be a nice bonus.

And?

When presented with information that you're acting in bad faith, if you choose to change: that is praiseworthy.

It's very brave to take that in, and not worry about "brand damage" or "appearing weak". It's brave to even challenge yourself when someone tells you you're wrong. It's entirely admirable.

It's the default human behaviour to double-down.

I don't understand this attitude. Bose listened to feedback, and responded in a positive way.

That's a good outcome for the community, and refusing to "praise" Bose's actions just because they didn't originally do what you wanted is petty and churlish.

Why should Bose not get credit for this? If you are saying that people should treat them the same regardless of whether they listen to their consumers or not, then why would they ever bother listening to the consumers?

Also remember that there is no believer like a convert. A community helping guide a company towards open source culture could make for a very strong ally.

Then again I know nothing about Bose’s open source culture so take it with a grain of salt.

> transformed the devices into dumb-speakers/amps

Isn't that still gonna happen now?

From [1]:

What will no longer work:

• Presets (preset buttons on the product and in the app)

Of course Bluetooth and AirPlay continues to work, but isn't that what a "dumb speaker" is?

[1] https://www.bose.com/soundtouch-end-of-life

I believe that if someone (or some company) changes their ways we should accept that and not condemn them forever.

Well maybe they should receive praise for changing their mind. I get your point but they could have doubled down.

Is the world a better place before or after Bose decided to change course?

Ugh, damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

There is no winning or redemption after getting cancelled it so seems.