this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2024
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Maybe what we need to do is to start considering such feature abandonment as abandonware and make it so all abandonware must be user modifiable and open source. (To me ideally, there would be a complete separation between software and hardware, aka, if the company can substitute or replace it, so must the user)
I'm pretty sure that looks better on paper than it will do in the real world. Today a lot of software libraries are incorporated into applications. These libraries solve specific problems that the vendor didn't have to solve themselves. Often these libraries are licensed to be used under specific circumstances. Even if you would get your hands on the source code, you are certainly not allowed to declare it open source.
So even if Sony were to release the OS on the Bravia as open source, it would most likely be a Swiss cheese with holes that had to be fixed before it was usable.
At that point you still wouldn't have gained much from an end user perspective since there is still no app store. Even if you set up your own local app store you would have to convince Netflix and other streaming services to release a client app for your tv.
I think the solution is more in the direction of legal pressure. If you sell something, it should be expected that you honor that sale and not change it to something it wasn't when you happily accepted the money.
Then the only your valid alternative to that is that you are no longer allowed to license code that is unable to be open sourced at the provider level. What are companies going to do, stop making software because they don't want to open source it? Like there isn't much a company you can do if they just unilaterally decide that this type of Licensing is no longer legal, companies aren't going to just choose to not exist because of it they're still going to exist and they're not going to shut down over the inability to have a closed Source license after abandonment
The worst case scenario is closed Source license libraries might decide to close because they don't need to exist anymore which means that companies would be forced to actually design the software they're working on, but in reality these types of libraries would likely just switch over to an open source support funded tier where they will provide the library is however they're not going to give any support unless they're on that subscription tier like how msps are
Yeah. Maybe aim for something that at least has a chance to become a law?
I agree, unfortunately without addressing the closed Source libraries in abandoned ware problem the higher issue can't be addressed which is that there is no legal obligation for a company to keep their services active, nor is there an obligation for a company to have a proper phase out of their services they could decide tomorrow to just close up and there's no real restrictions aside from Word of Mouth / PR.
As much as I would love companies being legally required to have a proper transition period into abandonware via the means of allowing the community to self host or modify their existing software, like you indicated it would put companies in a catch-22 in regards to licensing agreements. So I think the licensing issue has to be addressed first
That being said if a proper abandoned where requirement was pushed through without changes to licensing you would likely gain support of companies for the licensing problem as well because of the fact that they're in a catch-22, so at that point they have a personal interest and getting that written to law
A good start would be to require that companies put an expiration date on the products they sell, and until that date they are legally required to support the product. Also, it should be put into law that companies cannot remove features, services or content in a product after it was already sold until the expiration date.
The point in my “ideal world” is that because they are forced to open source the software and allow users to replace it, other users could for example try to implement android TV on that old Sony Bravia tv. If the Android phone market is anytbing to go by, it is a real possibility, depending on the popularity of the tv
Might be your ideal world but that will not happen. The only reason Android is "open" is because Google wanted to hit Microsoft and Apple where it hurts. If they were super pro open source they would have released all code for Okay Services and the hardware in Nexus and Pixel.
But they didn't... So... Yeah... Not even Google is sharing your vision.