On 6/10/21 2:08 AM, Paul Wise wrote: >> The report and its recommendations may provide a means >> to pierce the veil of closed platforms, like closed-sourced firmware. > > It seems unlikely to me that we will ever see a "Right to Repair" for > software, firmware or gateware.
So, why should laws protect the intellectual property of software companies but not the IP of hardware companies? What supporters euphemistically call a "right to repair" is in reality an initiative against the right of companies to protect their intellectual property. Why should any company take the risk of investment for new hardware developments when they have to fear that every other company in the world will get free access to their blue prints? The claim that hardware companies intentionally make it hard to repair consumer products is a conspiracy theory. In reality, a consumer product is primarily optimized for production costs which implies cheap capacitors or cases that are glued together. Lots of consumers seem to forget that a product sold into the market not only must cover the material costs but also the costs of engineering, marketing, customer support, customs, compliance tests and so on. And in the end, you still want there to be a small profit left which is what makes the whole business model viable in the first place. If law initiatives also now want to take away the exclusive rights of hardware designers over their blueprints and hence the market advantage over competitors that they took an investment risk for, companies will lose the incentive to design and develop new products. Companies aren't charities so in the end they must protect their investments and have to make profits to survive. Adrian -- .''`. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz : :' : Debian Developer - glaub...@debian.org `. `' Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaub...@physik.fu-berlin.de `- GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546 0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913
