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Comment by pwg | Hacker News Reader

>I think drivers should be compulsory to open source 5 years after the hardware is no longer sold,

Why wait five years? The hardware stops being sold on date X, the software/firmware must be published the same day.

> In a lot of cases it might be better using older hardware as new features would be added by the community forever!

And here you have found why the OEM's will fight via hordes of lobbyists any attempt to legislate a required publishing of software/firmware for out of production hardware. Keeping the old hardware useful after the OEM end-of-life's it means the OEM sees a smaller number of future sales of their "new and improved V2.0" [1] hardware, equating directly to lower revenue and profit.

[1] where what is "new and improved" is often nothing more than eye candy to convince you to give up your 1.0 version and buy the 2.0 variety.

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That's something I'm really angry over right now. Atomos builds the Ninja V portable monitor/recorder for videography purposes.

They sold the Ninja V and the Ninja V+, two exactly identical devices, but the Ninja V has artificial limitations of what resolutions it allows you to process. Obviously, you have to pay extra to enable other codecs, 99$ each.

So already the worst of DRM imaginable, especially as the only way to remove the artificial limitations of the Ninja V is to throw it away, buy an entirely new Ninja V+, and buy all unlocks separately yet again. Oh, and if you try to resell any of your devices, Atomos wipes the unlocks and demands that the new owner buys them yet again.

So already the worst kind of DRM infested money-grabbing BS imaginable.

But no, they found a way to make it even worse. They just deprecated the Ninja V and V+ and announced the all new Ninja and Ninja Ultra. They're identical. Same battery runtime. Same resolution. Same weight. Same performance.

But now with the new and improved AtomOS 11 software. Can't install that on the Ninja V/V+. Only way to upgrade? Throw your Ninja V away and buy a new Ninja.

If I find a way to jailbreak these devices, I fucking will. God I hate them so much.

the only solution is more competition for Ninja.

Or regulation like the one from the thread, requiring systems to be open sourced in certain cases. It would definitely help

From my experience in the industry the problems are usually working out the licensing of tons of licensed code that is included from other companies more than a desire to force upgrades.

Graphics card drivers are the absolute worst because not only do you have these licensing issues, but many games have workarounds because the API isn't called correctly so the driver just... makes up what should have happened.

This is where regulation works well; if hardware manufacturers are required to open their code, it will be a standard and expected part of supplier contracts. If someone wants to license their code, they will have to allow for that or they'll have no buyers.

Do we know this regulation works well? Where's it been implemented?

Maybe I'm naive, but things like UL or ROHS or GDPR or SOC2 seem analogous to me. Want to be a supplier for an organization that needs a certification? Then your product and all of your suppliers and all of your competitors need to be able to meet that requirement, and it's just a table stakes feature.

The government allows software piracy protection.

There should be a trade-off where source (with a few variables hidden for privacy / security) is escrowed and released after a certain time. Would MS share prices really drop if 20 year old programs like Windows XP and Office were forced to be open sourced? Would anyone take a major hit?

The cost would be small, but the upside is the preservation of our technological history.

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