SmartDry’s useful laundry sensor to be cloud-bricked next month

Re:SmartDry’s useful laundry sensor to be cloud-bricked next... by voisin on Thursday September 01, 2022 @08:08PM (#32685039)

Easy: legislate an implied obligation for ongoing support of past sales for a reasonable period of time and as part of wind down that obligation is a liability that must be discharged with posted credit of some sort (or the purchaser would have to take this liability on) or via open sourcing the software.

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Re:SmartDry’s useful laundry sensor to be cloud-bricked next... by selcuka on Thursday September 01, 2022 @08:17PM (#32685094)

Fair point. That's called a warranty, and they should have been legally required to support their product until the end of warranty period. Posting a notice on their website in June and shutting down the servers in September is a jerk move.

My point still stands though. They can't force them to open up their trade secrets.

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Re:SmartDry’s useful laundry sensor to be cloud-bricked next... by Teever on Thursday September 01, 2022 @09:13PM (#32685465)

Are you sure about that?

If the government can make a law that says someone can't sell a particular product (Like say, children's toys with razor blades in them) why can't the government pass a law that says that if a company sells a particular catagory of product then the company must open the product up if they discontinue the product or go out of business?

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Re:SmartDry’s useful laundry sensor to be cloud-bricked next... by gaganyaan on Thursday September 01, 2022 @10:17PM (#32685845)

All laws are social contracts. Of course they could force them to open up their trade secrets. It wouldn't even to be something extreme, Congress could just pass a law saying "discontinuing a commercial product requires publishing everything needed to maintain that product", and that would be that.

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