alt Hacker NewsIt is not always possible to provide the required support. First, it is expensive, as someone needs to prepare all the materials and resources the community would need to continue supporting the product after official support ends. Second, there are legal restrictions, for example, you may not be allowed to provide access to the radio firmware. Finally, most companies simply do not want to make their intellectual property publicly available.
You could make the argument that manufacturers only need to provide the means for the community to support the device, rather than extensive documentation. However, these communities are often so small that this would never be a priority for most companies. Combined with the IP-related issues, I don't think this is really feasible.
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You are framing this as something they have to do: support it, release documentation, open source it, etc.
It's not. It's something they have to stop doing. Stop adding code that specifically stops third party software from running.
> Finally, most companies simply do not want to make their intellectual property publicly available.
You can just stop to the last reason, they don't want to give up ownership back to you.
They would prefer you to throw the device in the bin and buy a new one, preferably from them again.
> It is not always possible to provide the required support. First, it is expensive
By not doing it you are basically outsourcing this cost to the environment.
You've just made an argument for a bunch of regulation to force opening up and removing obstacles.
E.g.: "for example, you may not be allowed to provide access to the radio firmware." Given that everything has a radio these days (everything is wifi- and/or bluetooth- enabled), this is just stupid. Why is firmware for basically essential infra not legally available?
Same goes for many, many, many other things.
The intellectual property is not some god given right unlike air and water. There is little need not to support a decade old hardware and effectively turning the said hardware to a door stop, or a landfill.
Btw, it's difficult to believe the post is a good faith argument.