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Comment by aplorbust | Hacker News Reader

"Just about everything you own running embedded software that has some update functionality..."

"Worse, just about all these devices have some access to JTAG ports such that you could easily program them yourself if you wanted to and had something useful to flash them with. I've run into so many products I use on a regular basis with bugs or simple but badly needed features that I could have easily fixed/hacked in with access to the source code but alas, I cannot."

IMO, it is a massive waste. Short-sighted, short-term thinking.

There are people who for whatever reason do not want you to have access to the software ("firmware") and to read/fix/improve upon it.

Some of these people comment on HN. They become active during debates over whether users would derive any benefit from being able to read and edit source code.

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The problem seems to be that software is viewed as a trade secret.

Big old companies have CEOs and boards that see embedded software in the same way many legislators and judges see it. Firstly they don't really understand it. But in any case it's part of the product and people have no reason to tinker with it. Now software is being used to enforce what manufacturers could previously have only dreamed of: monopolizing repairs.

With hindsight it seems obvious that things converged onto the embedded computers of consumer products: think microwaves and TVs rather than general purpose computers. The problem with tractors is that all the farmers I know have a much better idea of how a tractor works and how to fix it than the average motorist does about their vehicle.

I am reminded of the era when windscreen-mounted GPS navigation systems started becoming mainstream. Most of the models had very similar hardware but the software was all that differed. I never looked into it but I suspect almost zero had source code published.

To the more typical consumer, the unit is as a whole and the software comes with it. If it routinely takes you the wrong way down a one way street or tries to take you down a set of steps, it's defective and needs to be replaced.

To the more technical consumer it's clear that either the software or the data is at fault and either could be fixed with the right resources. I still feel a sadness at this, yet this waste is insignificant compared to a tractor or any other vehicle.

>The problem seems to be that software is viewed as a trade secret.

Because it is? I mean a lot of the automotive embedded industry is moving toward separation of software from hardware (AUTOSAR Runtime Environment), which is not working as well as expected, because embedded and separating software is a bit tricky. But the goal is to have more suppliers for software than for the hardware. The only trade secret these companies will hold is the software IP.

I think farmers should be able to fix their own equipment, but software being a trade secret is a fact, not something only big old stuffy companies see that way.

The other thing is there are many regulations to comply with. Companies don't want to get sued for some hacks by customers.

The only trade secret these companies will hold is the software IP.

Lots of companies in other industries prosper in that situation, without locking everything down. RHT, for instance, has performed really well over the last year. These software subs could likewise go to a service model or literally anything other than "our software must be installed in crippled fashion". It's not as though e.g. Honda is going to decide to "pirate" their shit.

Not only a trade secret, but also a liability. If source code is disclosed, companies can be accused of copyright violation when some code is similar to an older protected program.

There's another angle - vendors also make money from support contracts, and fear that if they gave you the ability to get support from anyone (even yourself!) they'd lose that revenue stream. For more consumer-oriented products, manufacturers don't want to deal with supporting products that have been modified... (well, they don't want to support them unmodified either, often as not).

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