Re:It's your device, you should be able to repair it
by kbenson on Friday April 30, 2021 @04:11PM
(#26998677)
> Now "right to repair" includes not only designing devices to be easier to repair but also includes legacy software support?
Any right to repair law that doesn't also include provisions to ensure you can run your own code on the device is hobbled. How "repairable" is a device that is cloud based but they disabled the cloud service?
I don't care that manufacturers support the software beyond what they've contractually signed up for, but I do care that I'm not left holding a brick afterwards by design. As long as the capability exists to put other firmware that exists on the device, or write my own, I'm protected from that, at least in the general case. If nobody has provided that firmware and I can't do it myself, that's still a situation I think it many times better than the alternative.
Any right to repair law that doesn't also include provisions to ensure you can run your own code on the device is hobbled. How "repairable" is a device that is cloud based but they disabled the cloud service?
I don't care that manufacturers support the software beyond what they've contractually signed up for, but I do care that I'm not left holding a brick afterwards by design. As long as the capability exists to put other firmware that exists on the device, or write my own, I'm protected from that, at least in the general case. If nobody has provided that firmware and I can't do it myself, that's still a situation I think it many times better than the alternative.