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Comment by click170 | Hacker News Reader

Vendor lockin should be outright illegal it benefits no one but the vendor and in fact harms everyone else.

Why is vendor lock in NOT illegal? (Besides lobbying)

Why don't you use your ability to purchase software from somebody else (or use open alternatives) rather than increase the ability of governments to threaten and imprison people? While there are societal benefits from regulating monopolies, making "anything that might annoy a consumer" illegal is a dangerous path and does little but erode freedoms.

Probably because of the massive power asymmetry between vendor and user.

Suppose my only option for earning a living depends on software from Vendor X, who has used lock-in techniques to eliminate their competition. At this point there would be nothing to be done except make vendor lock-in illegal.

It would be easy to do, too, simply by requiring either A. up-to-date, detailed documentation of file formats and protocols necessary for data migration, or B. support for an interchange format that provides the same features as a proprietary format.

I'm still not understanding why it should be illegal. We can start with an assumption that Vendor X eliminated their competition by fair practices or they would already be subject to antitrust regulations. If Vendor X uses their position to unfairly prevent competition (either in their own space or others), they are already breaking the law. If they aren't doing that, I fail to see why just having lock-in should be illegal.

This is not to say I'm a fan of vendor lock-in. Quite the opposite, actually. But I do know laws like this will always have unintended consequences, will always be manipulated by those same large companies ostensibly being regulated to give them advantages over new entrants, and, as a result, will always make the competitive landscape more difficult than it would have otherwise been. How big does your market have to be? How big does your company have to be? Is the broadband chip on your phone subject or just your whole phone? What about trade secrets?

The advantage of the antitrust laws is in the lack of specificity. It takes a complete trial to actually show wrong-doing.

I totally agree with your sentiment. But, how exactly would you enforce it? All they have to do is say "The games make use of Origin technology and won't work without our software". I am not really sure how you could prove otherwise or compel them to somehow provide it without the feature.

You have a good point.

This paints it as more of a societal problem than a legal one, and I think you're correct in hindsight.

I think about my gamer friends, and they've resigned themselves to vendor lockin because "What choice do I have if I want to play with my friends?", something I've come to call the Facebook Argument.

However, when I think about [some of] my colleagues, many of them don't like vendor lockin when it's applied to them, but aren't against implementing similar features in their own projects with a different name, and I have a hard time believing they don't see it for what it is.

Edit: typo

Because a case can always be made that the lock in provides some benefit, such as providing a consistent user experience. What you are really arguing is that the benefits they can provide through controlling the experience end to end are clearly outweighed by the negative aspects. While this is probably apparent to most people, proving it as a legal argument may be much harder.

Lots of things that only benefit one party are legal, why should they be illegal?

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