On 6/9/21 10:53 PM, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote: > 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?
Copyright (for software, firmware, etc.) provides all the protection that's needed. > > 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? Maybe not everything should be for sale. The public Internet wouldn't be what it is today if the original developers of http had decided to monetize the new invention. If BSD hadn't decided to give away their TCP/IP network stack for free, companies like Microsoft wouldn't have been able to connect their proprietary operating systems to the Internet. > > 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. Until just a few years ago, people in the United States weren't even permitted to unlock their own paid-off cell phones so they could switch to a different provider. One had to jailbreak an iPhone to install non-Apple-approved software. When I buy a car, a phone, a computer, or a DVD, it's mine -- I'm not simply leasing it from the company that built it or designed it, and I should be able to do whatever I want with that product. Here's a more recent example: I've been trying to figure out how to install a more modern Linux kernel on a PowerMac 6100. More than 20 years ago, Apple teamed up with the now-defunct OSF to use the Mach 3.0 microkernel along with Apple's customized version of a 2.0.33 Linux kernel to bring Linux to Nubus PowerMacs. This worked until Apple gave up on the project, and though there was a successful effort to bring a few 2.4.x Linux kernels (without Mach) to Nubus PowerMacs, that too died. The thing about Apple's involvement with MkLinux was that they had no problem modifying Linux kernels, but they weren't willing to make their "MkLinux Booter" open source (or document how it worked), and that's really what killed Linux (and NetBSD) for Nubus PowerMacs. > > 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. Fortunately, Apple was still able to eek out a $13.7 billion profit on a revenue of 64 billion USD in its fiscal 2019 fourth quarter: https://www.macrumors.com/2019/10/30/apple-4q-2019-results/ > > 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. Companies that make useful products don't need to "protect their investments" by failing to provide hardware and software documentation. Simple copyright is sufficient to prevent mass scale copying (of Mac ROMS, for example). Apple used to know that providing detailed hardware information would actually help them sell more products (remember the Apple II?). Remember the Lexmark printer cartridge lawsuit? Lexmark tried to lock customers into buying only Lexmark cartridges. And SCO sued Novell (with Microsoft's backing) in an effort to destroy Linux in a misguided attempt to protect SCO's so-called "intellectual property." > > Adrian >
