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There should be something like a 'right to repurpose' for old tech. The only reason I keep old PCs laying around is because the BIOS allows anything to come along and install on it.

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More than that, there should be a "right to do whatever the hell you want" from day one. It's your device, you paid for it, and you own it, yet for whatever reason we allow these companies to tell us how we can use the hardware we paid for and own.

You have a right to do whatever you want with it. You can take a hacksaw to it, hit it with a hammer, flash the BIOS with random noise. You won't be imprisoned, the government won't disappear you, the company won't sue you and won't care at all.

What you are demanding is more like "after I bought it and the transaction is complete, I want the company to put person-years of unpaid work into making it work a different way which was never offered or part of the deal". That's completely different.

No, this is not correct at all. I am saying that I should be able to run whatever code I want on hardware that I own and pay for. There's no effort from the manufacturer required at all for this in the same way that I can currently run whatever code I want on my laptop without the support of the manufacturer.

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