Comment by hnarn

I feel like there should be ”abandonware” legislation for both software and hardware. Like, if you’ve written code or built hardware (or both) and you’ve sold that to consumers, and you end up dropping support for that thing but the company still exists, you should be legally obligated to provide code and schematics to people that have verifiably purchased it.

The code or schematics doesn’t even have to be freely licensed and distribution could still be restricted, patents still apply and what not, but programmers could develop their own ”patch sets” on top of the proprietary code that can only be used by people who already have the code, extending the lifetime and adding features.

Obviously it’s not perfect but I think it’s a pretty reasonable compromise between companies IP interests and the rights of consumers and fighting e-waste, because the way this is set up today is in my opinion quite absurd. There’s no natural law forcing us to accept planned obsolescence.