EOL hardware should mean open-source software

https://www.marcia.no/words/eol

55•Marciplan•1h ago

Comments

walterbell•1h ago

Is there an RSS feed?

herf•29m ago

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.

ktallett•26m ago

This is where I hope EU do their magic

m463•23m ago

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.

irjustin•8m ago

> tax support for these kinds of things

What are you hoping for with tax support?

wmf•11m ago

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.

kogepathic•5m ago

> 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.

Aurornis•3m ago

> 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.

gregsadetsky•2m ago

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...