> That it makes a company liable in case someone repairs their truck and it blows up

Is this the case for auto shops now?

> That it might force companies to publish business secrets

There are many, many ways to compile and preserve business secrets in blobs, but there's probably a fundamental issue if you're dependent on that.

> someone finds a flaw in the API, uses it to ruin other people's machines, and then the company gets sued for it

If you publish crappy code in your paid product and someone suffers for it, you should be sued. That's not a consequence, that's the system working.

> That it forces companies to sell pieces that are not profitable

The company has a line of profit - the initial device. This is not forcing them to take on a new business, this is forcing them to support the purchase I already made. If you can't sell spare parts, don't sell tractors. If you can't handle a support call, don't take my money.

... and as true as that could be in theory, doesn't mean that it couldn't essentially bankrupt a business model that has built a lot of these companies. My family is in heavy farm equipment sales, and the reality is that without the margins on parts and repair, a lot of those business just aren't viable. The lock-in is there to really prevent the fundamental underpinning of their business model. Not saying it is correct or ethical, but it is the economic reality of how a lot of those businesses are structured.

... so the machines would cost more up-front instead of being offset by subsequent repairs?

Why should any company be forced to support a sale they've already made? Unless they are beholden to a warranty promise, a return policy, or it was promised at the time of purchase that support would be available for some amount of time, I don't follow this thought process at all. This actually sounds like a way to run a company/industry into the ground, or make the original products prohibitively expensive - to account for the cost.

>If you can't handle a support call, don't take my money.

Was there a promise of support at the time of purchase? If so, then yeah, that's a problem worth caring about. If not, then why give them money?

>That it makes a company liable in case someone repairs their truck and it blows up, since they can't prove that the two were related. Also to consider: the machine blows up after a repair, but it's not related to that.

Wouldn't this situation be analogous to the automobile industry? Surely this issue has been spoken on in the courts.

These are at least logical arguments.

I am also not sure I agree with them, or rather with the way things turn out in practice. But, as they say, "a villain is a hero in the other side".