Comment by abetusk
1 day ago
Do you know what the single, most effective way to ensure end-of-life projects open sources the software and hardware? It's if it's *open source*.
Not assurances that if they meet their funding goal they'll open source. Not a pinky promise to open source in the future. Not magnanimous decision by upper management to open source if the business fails.
It's open sourcing from the outset so that people who invest in their technology can be assured they've fulfilled their promise to the community.
Pay for products that produce open source software and hardware. Pay artists that put out libre/free work. Demand projects that ask for money and "will open source in the future" open source now before taking your money.
In my view, finger wagging at corporate entities not open sourcing their products after end-of-life amounts to posturing.
At the same time, consumer hardware isn't a niche hobby market
Linux is not a niche hobby OS.
> Pay for products that produce open source software and hardware. Pay artists that put out libre/free work. Demand projects that ask for money and "will open source in the future" open source now before taking your money.
This is the most important part. The markets can be shifted in our favor if the consumers unite and vote with our wallets. Even the biggest MNCs can't resist the demands by a united consumer front. Well known brands have been disappeared after they offended their customer base.
This is very difficult in practice, but not impossible. It will need a cultural shift among consumers and that will need a lot of grassroots work by a group of dedicated individuals. But it has been done before - for example, consider the role FSF played in making free software so common. To begin with, consumers have to be taught to believe in and rely on our collective bargaining power, instead of reluctantly accepting exploitative corporate bs. The next will be to take smart decisions on each product. Obviously, only a small group within the society would know what is harmful and what we really need. We should develop a culture where the concerns and recommendations of the subject experts are quickly disseminated among the larger consumer community.
I know the above sounds too ambitious. But it's not nearly the hardest goal anyone has achieved through sheer will. Whenever I raise this point in relation to any specific topic on HN, someone always replies with a cynical, dismissive and defeatist take, often arguing that the consumer-hostile product has the 'market demand'. They rarely address the market manipulation that the manufacturers resort to, and the fact that those poor product choices are the result of missing consumer vigilance. Besides it's easy to sound smart by scoffing at someone else's suggestions. But it takes hard work to make a positive impact on society with an original idea.
Consumers vote with their wallet buying disposable electronics at 1 euro shops kind of quality.
This has to be legally enforced to turn around.
> The markets can be shifted in our favor if the consumers unite and vote with our wallets
This is very naive. "We can solve the climate emergency if the consumers unite and stop living the way they live", sure. But obviously the consumers don't do that, even knowing that their children will die because of it.
This is exactly the cynical, dismissive and defeatist take that I was talking about. Yet, we have numerous examples of this dismissal being wrong. Right now, free software is something we take for granted. But you have no idea what sort of great achievement it was for the early pioneers. Microsoft even used to call it evil.
> We can solve the climate emergency if the consumers unite and stop living the way they live
This is wrong in two ways. The first is that it is a strawman. The consumers are the biggest emitters. The big corporations, militaries and billionaires are. Second, we did solve a related problem with market pressure - the stratospheric ozone depletion and the ozone hole.
Again as I said before, it's easy to call it naive or scoff at it any number of ways. But people have achieved much harder goals. And that takes a lot of skill and effort.
2 replies →
> This is the most important part. The markets can be shifted in our favor if the consumers unite and vote with our wallets.
have you even glanced at what touching hardware manufacturing involves? The amount of NDAs alone ends this. anything with a smidge of processor performance requires it, same for virtually every method of manufacturing anything.
also, FSF did jack squat.
> have you even glanced at what touching hardware manufacturing involves? The amount of NDAs alone ends this.
Do you think all that came out of the vacuum? It was set into motion over several decades of gradual erosion of user rights. Ultimately, everything is subject to the laws of supply and demand. If you can't see that far, you're thinking a level too shallow to see the problem and possible solutions.
> FSF did jack squat.
People don't simply scorn at FSF or anyone else like this just because they don't like it. I guess that explains the sophistication of your arguments.
In most cases the market rewards closed source. You can't reasonably expect that to change by pressuring consumers. We need regulation here.
I don't claim there's any easy answer.
To your point, market rewards are complex and doesn't always reward closed source. I would say the markets can reward companies that add value, and companies can add value by servicing a demand at reduced costs. One cost reduction measure is to use FOSS. For example, if you're building a data center, one cost saving measure is to use Linux as the underlying operating system over MS Windows.
I partially agree that pressuring consumers has issues, but the consumers we're talking about in this context are programmers, software developers, electrical engineers and other technically minded folk. Many projects only target dozens or hundreds "consumers" and, for those, advocating for purchasing FOSS might be a valid strategy.
I'm open to regulation but it's a coarse tool that favors large corporations. In my opinion, one way to larger regulation is to start small, show value from a growing community adoption and then try to push bigger. Linux was a toy operating system until it wasn't.
One minor point on regulation: From what I understand, there are some stipulations for (US) government grants to ensure FOSS artifacts get produced. I think violations of these conditions is common place. So we needed regulation in this area, we successfully got it and now we see that it's only as good as enforcement.
> For example, if you're building a data center, one cost saving measure is to use Linux
You're giving an example where a proprietary service benefits from open source. It supports the opposite point to what you're trying to say: not only the market rewards proprietary products, but open source actually helps proprietary products. If you open source your code, you risk helping your competitor.
> Many projects only target dozens or hundreds "consumers" and, for those, advocating for purchasing FOSS might be a valid strategy.
Again that's off topic. The goal is to enable technical people to make EOL products work for everyone.
> So we needed regulation in this area, we successfully got it and now we see that it's only as good as enforcement.
Which is a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem: in order for regulations to be enforced, we need the enforcer (a government) to be more powerful than the enforcee. But after we have allowed TooBigTech to appear and become more powerful than governments, it's difficult to expect anyone to enforce the regulations, right?
Such regulation would inevitably introduce exceptions for products with limited-time use (because it doesn't make sense to support everything forever), manufacturers would explicitly mark all products as such, and consumers wouldn't even find it wrong.
New incentives to would hit market reality where most people want cheap devices, not lifetime support for something they themselves consider practically disposable.
If most consumers don't care, regulation won't help. Much like climate change.