When hardware goes end-of-life, companies need to open-source the software

Do you know what the single, most effective way to ensure end-of-life projects open sources the software and hardware? It's if it's *open source*.

Not assurances that if they meet their funding goal they'll open source. Not a pinky promise to open source in the future. Not magnanimous decision by upper management to open source if the business fails.

It's open sourcing from the outset so that people who invest in their technology can be assured they've fulfilled their promise to the community.

Pay for products that produce open source software and hardware. Pay artists that put out libre/free work. Demand projects that ask for money and "will open source in the future" open source now before taking your money.

In my view, finger wagging at corporate entities not open sourcing their products after end-of-life amounts to posturing.

> What I am asking for: publish a basic GitHub repo with the hardware specs and connection protocols. Let the community build their own apps on top of it.

This concept works fine for the author's example of a kitchen scale, but fails when the device in question is something like a router that has secure boot with one key burned into e-fuses.

In that case we need both open software and a requirement that the manufacturer escrow signing keys with someone so that after EOL any software can be run.

I totally agree with the frustration of having hardware I would like to keep using but can't because it got EOL. Like a smart speaker or something.

But I don't know if there is a pragmatic way to approach that. I mean, I could also say "it should be illegal to produce e-waste", but what does that mean and how do we actually do it?

Most systems now "fail closed" because they are based on a code signing chain of trust that has no exceptions. It would be better if some portion of these systems were made to "fail open" - you don't want a botnet to take over in this situation but you should be able to delegate code signing duties to a new party when the original one goes under or stops supporting a device.

> Now, I'm not asking companies to open-source their entire codebase. That's unrealistic when an app is tied to a larger platform. What I am asking for: publish a basic GitHub repo with the hardware specs and connection protocols. Let the community build their own apps on top of it.

The actual proposal in this blog doesn’t make much sense. Having the specs of a device isn’t going to change much because they can be determined by anyone examining the PCB. Most devices don’t have a simple connection protocol, like the Spotify Car Thing used as an example.

I actually think this is a great idea. Not even for "Open Source".

Can you imagine if UBNT had to open source its EOL boot chain, so that Cambium was legally entitled to roll its firmware for old Unifi kit? And Vice Versa?

The result might not be "Old hardware supported by the community" the result might be "Eternal product updates so we can legally prevent Cambium from taking our customers"

A huge feature of copyright is that it is time-limited. When the copyright period expires, it passes into the public domain and belongs to everybody.

There are two major things that undermine this for software: copyright durations, and lack of source code. Software copyright durations should be at most a few years, and to be eligible for copyright, software should have its source code published or at minimum held in escrow, so that when the copyright expires it is still useful.

We already require patents to be published in exchange for the protection we give them; software copyright needs to be the same.

One time I worked at a non-SV megacorp and they estimated the cost of open sourcing one project. It would've taken between 2 and 6 months and cost mid-six figures. Even if they wanted to pay for this when the product is about to be abandoned, they literally can't if they licensed some non-free IP.

In my experience, whenever you mandate open source software, you get software so unusable that it might as well be closed-source. Like, it doesn't compile, and they ignore all bug reports.

Dumping responsibility on "the community" could backfire in a big way. It sounds good at small scale but it becomes a form of entitlement if the whole industry does it.

- my opinion is going to sound very controversial here

- this also extends to software

- when it has been 25 yrs since a game has released, you are no longer making money from your game big time

- companies should be forced to open source their games at this point in time

- so that we can revive games that companies like ubisoft keep shutting down and removing from steam libraries completely

One great example/case for this would be Aura Frames (recommended to me by a few folks here when I posted an Ask HN) [0]

If the company disappears... what happens to the devices and the cloud storage?

I've been really enjoying the product (it's really well done, the mobile app works perfectly well) but it's a scary thought.

I also found this Reddit thread [1] with some language from the company supposedly saying they would do their best to launch alternative tooling if they disappeared, but I can't find this language anywhere else online.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45341781

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/homeautomation/comments/1b8vei3/wha...

"EOL hardware should mean open-source software"

It is if you buy carefully: I don't buy hardware that can't be used with linux or whatever I deem necessary. And then, there's the car...

with most of the electric are just oem stuff from china, how are you going to enforce it?

How about requiring all APIs to be open? Companies are free to run/maintain/drop servers and apps, but we'd have the ability to use the hardware we bought, if we write our own apps.

That might actually be good for security. If APIs must be public, proper cloud security becomes necessary (rather than relying on obscurity).

I disagree. The average consumer needs to be educated that if a remote server can brick a device you have already paid money for, you do not own it. It has been leased.

The economics of leasing vs buying are well understood by the general public. Allow them to make an honest decision at the time of purchase.

Phones that don't get updates for 12 months also should be required to unlock their bootloaders, so a 3rd party ROM can be installed, or at least Magisk can be loaded.

Mediatek devices are beyond hope, but some could be saved this way that are otherwise trash.

Instead of trying to regulate everything, perhaps it would be better if consumers educated themselves and did not buy devices that do not run locally using open protocols in the first place. For me, it's a hard requirement -- I will not buy a "smart" anything device that isn't supported offline by Home Assistant. This restricts my choice set, but so be it. Sometimes, it means doing more work. I won't buy a Ring camera, so I had to build my own system using generic RTSP cameras, some hard drives and a PC.

> And here's the thing: with vibe-coding making development more accessible than ever, this isn't just for hardcore developers anymore. Regular users can actually tinker with this stuff now.

Have you tried pointing an LLM agent at a decompiled apk? It could probably write you protocol docs for it.

but because the app is no longer in development, it's essentially useless

the app used to store data for up to 5 users to keep track over time. I miss that!

What? Was it storing the data on a cloud server? In that case it's a different story, but a local app should continue working essentially indefinitely.

All this focus on source code is IMHO missing the point. RMS also missed this point when he started the GNU project. Source code is neither necessary nor sufficient for (legal) freedom. They just need to relinquish the copyright and release any keys and such getting in the way. Lots of examples otherwise --- I'll refer you to the cracking scene, game modding, etc.

In the physical world, products can be "EOL" for decades and the aftermarket will fill in the void if there is demand, often even when the original product is still in production. The original manufacturer never released blueprints and other comparable-to-source-code information; they just don't try to stop the aftermarket. Mid-century cars are a great example of this.

tl;dr: stop demanding source code, start demanding freedom.

I think bose did a wise thing with their speakers. Turns "company makes my purchase worthless" to "my purchase now has open source software".

...although it could be "no more product support, talk to random people on github"

actually, don't know why there couldn't be legislative or tax support for these kinds of things.

More like drivers should be open source to begin with.

This is where I hope EU do their magic

Dear EU Santa, please force Meta to open source the Facebook Portal as well so I can repurpose relatively decent hardware for something useful and fun, rather than e-waste.

Is there an RSS feed?

I think you should be allowed to stop supporting a hardware device without open sourcing the software, full stop. I just think that's the least bad option.

I'd be fine if manufacturers had to have some kind of standard "nutrition facts" label of what will happen to its functionality if support is ended.

Nice concept, yet, this isn't realistic but for a few special cases.

In simple terms, if a company has a continuum of products of a certain category over time, the designs (hardware, software, manufacturing, testing, etc.) are typically evolutionary in nature.

This means that product B inherits from product A, C from B, etc. When product C goes to market, A and B might be EOL. Open sourcing anything related to product C means relinquishing their intellectual property.

Nobody in their right mind would do that unless a unique set of conditions are in place to have that make sense. In general terms, this does not happen.

if EOL hardware become open source and community can support it then community would extend that EOL product and making it extensively harder for older customer to buy new product

I love to see this future but knowing this, company would never do this