Devastating that there is not a higher awareness of this at the outset. Perhaps, along with other suggestions in this thread, it should be obligatory to pair any program with a university to ensure sharing & continuation of knowledge.
> Their Bionic Eyes Are Now Obsolete And Unsupported
It's for this reason that I believe all medical implant firmware and required associated software should be FOSS. Nobody should ever lose the use of something embedded in their body because a company goes out of business.
Also the argument about defending intellectual property doesn't make sense: the software will probably do trivial things and be very simple, that is what you are selling is the hardware itself, and that is already covered by patents.
So making the code public will allow people to find a replacement in the eventuality that the manufacturer stops supporting the product.
This should be imposed by the governments, in my opinion, also for another reason: when the company that makes the hardware device stops supporting it, in countries with a public healthcare system it's the state itself that has to support the patient. How can the healthcare system provide assistance to something that doesn't know internally how it works? How can it go to another company to ask to fix the device?
How do you figure? In the case of something like an insulin pump or a pacemaker, sure, but once we start interfacing with nerves, especially once we start trying to communicate with them properly instead of just blunt-force stimulating a bunch of them, these devices are essentially software.
That's not to say I necessarily disagree with your conclusion. For devices that depend on patented hardware, opening up the software still works because the hardware effectively acts as a copy protection dongle.
For other devices, or for cases where the software contains critical 'secret sauce', what we need might be something more like the automotive right-to-repair legislation. Even if the device is closed source, the manufacturer must provide appropriate documentation and tooling to allow third parties maintain the device for its intended service life (which, of course, is hopefully a bit longer for a brain implant than for a hatchback!)
The more integral these implants get, the more this feels like "you're not legally permitted to know how this part of your body works".
Imagone the human rights abuses possible with this technology. You could offer loans for digital organs. and if the paymwnt is late you turn organs off remotely!
If you think about it, it's the same thing with drug formulas: after a period of exclusive then any company can produce it, of course paying the royalties to whoever owns the patent. It can be the same for software. Of course we have to talk about algorithms that are not trivial, as it's the case on most medical devices (most firmware just does very trivial things, that could be in principle be done by dedicated analog circuitry)
Patients’ interests should take precedence over creditors and investors.