If limited to the bootloader, such as allowing users to run their own operating system, then that is definitely a possibility, with the exception of firmware running on the device itself. But I doubt that is what most users here are expecting, and in my opinion, it wouldn't provide much value to the vast majority of customers.

Not every business venue needs to be a multi billion multi national and using some devices for a long time is better than burrying them all in a land fill.

> it wouldn't provide much value to the vast majority of customers

I should have phrased it as:

> it wouldn't provide enough value to their customers to create meaningful value for the company.

You can argue that "ha ha, we shall enact regulation to force them to do this!" but the reality is that only a small percentage of customers would actually benefit from such regulation. Because most people are not going to tinker with their devices, especially if there is no easy or straightforward way to do so.

So in the end, you'd have more regulation that makes it harder for new players to enter the market, while doing little to solve actual customer problems and ultimately imposing significant costs on manufacturers.

For people who actually care about long-term device support, they can choose reputable manufacturers that already offer it. If no such manufacturers exist, that may instead represent an opportunity for someone to build a business around providing better long-term support.

It's the large stream of perfectly usable e-waste modern practices emit.

Anything that makes a significant portion of that stream reusable by anyone is a win.

If that's someone buying e-waste, unlocking devices, flashing linux, and then reselling it to whomever then that's still a win.

From my point of view, the proposals suggested here, although difficult to discuss in detail because of how abstract they are, would not solve this issue in any meaningful way. By "meaningful" I mean that the cost-to-benefit or cost-to-regulation ratio would be rather poor.

IMO, the core issue with e-waste isn't necessarily bad practices by manufacturers, but rather consumer behavior. People often throw away 2–3-year-old phones that are still fully supported by the manufacturer. For example, with the exception of the phone I broke, I usually replace my phone every 5–6 years. Within that timeframe, I have the battery replaced by the manufacturer at least once, and the phone continues to work just fine.

This issue extends beyond electronics as well. People often throw away clothes once they "go out of fashion," which these days happens exceptionally quickly. The same applies to furniture, appliances, and other consumer goods that are often replaced simply because newer models are available, rather than because the old ones are no longer functional.

This is ultimately a broader issue of consumer culture and our tendency to replace things rather than repair or continue using them. I don't agree that this is primarily due to a lack of repair options or difficulty accessing repairs. In many cases, the means to repair these products already exist, but consumers simply choose to replace them instead.

This deserves a 'in the first world' caveat. Most waste streams terminate in the not-first world. There's a reason there are so many photos of African and SE Asian markets full of a hodgepodge of mobile device and English-printed t-shirts.

Which is to say, increasing repairability shouldn't just be measured by how likely the first world is to use it, but also to how useful it would be to downstream consumers.

To your list, there is a critical caveat to my caveat though: weight and volume.

Things like appliances (small motor, big bulky box) and furniture (bulky) are exceptions to the above, given their difficulty to efficiency ship en masse.

> I don't agree [consumer tendency to replace over repair] is primarily due to a lack of repair options or difficulty accessing repairs. In many cases, the means to repair these products already exist, but consumers simply choose to replace them instead.

It's a gradient, like all things. Repair has difficulty and cost. Policies (like this one) could be enacted which decrease that difficulty and cost. Are they worth it?

> cost-to-benefit or cost-to-regulation

Which gets to the measuring. My suspicion is that most HN commenters (myself included) are weighing from placing a high value on 'owning your own tools' which may not generalize to the populace.

But even so, I think it's a valid question of whether society would be 'better' if people had more ownership of their devices. Versus the current outsourcing to the mercy of Google / Huawei / Samsung / Vivo / Xioami / Apple.

Cars are a good example of this. Historically, people in Western Europe would sell their used vehicles into what was essentially a second-hand market in Eastern Europe. This worked and continues to work to this day.

While a car is a good example of something whose lifespan can be extended beyond its first user, I don't think the same necessarily applies to mobile phones that are more than seven years old and are no longer supported by the manufacturer. That said, broken phones or phones that are traded in early in their lifespan can definitely find a home in secondary markets.

> Things like appliances (small motor, big bulky box) and furniture (bulky) are exceptions to the above, given their difficulty to efficiency ship en masse.

It's largely a matter of the weight- and volume-to-cost ratio. Otherwise I agree.

> It's a gradient, like all things. Repair has difficulty and cost. Policies (like this one) could be enacted which decrease that difficulty and cost. Are they worth it?

There are already vendors that refurbish phones and resell them today. However, it is not a particularly profitable business, largely due to the high labour costs involved. And I'm not talking about the difficulty of replacing a glued-in battery, but rather the cost and expertise required for component-level repairs on the motherboard, something no regulation is going to magically make disappear.

> But even so, I think it's a valid question of whether society would be 'better' if people had more ownership of their devices. Versus the current outsourcing to the mercy of Google / Huawei / Samsung / Vivo / Xioami / Apple.

It depends on where you draw the line on ownership and what benefits that provides to the end consumer.

There are specific areas where full ownership is explicitly restricted by regulation or other legal requirements, such as radio firmware or secure payment systems like Apple Pay or Google Pay. I don't believe consumers would benefit from increased access to these systems. In fact, I believe the opposite.

There are also cases where manufacturers rely on intellectual property from third-party vendors and simply cannot release or open-source the code without violating a non-disclosure agreement and potentially causing significant financial harm to the vendor. Even if regulation were introduced to allow manufacturers to disregard such agreements, that would not eliminate the underlying problem. It would simply shift the cost onto the third-party vendor, whose intellectual property and business model could be undermined by having its proprietary technology made public.

However, there are also cases where software or hardware becomes unusable for no apparent reason whatsoever. A good example, albeit purely a software one, is what Stop Killing Games is trying to address. I would generally agree with initiatives like that.

Fair, on the hardware side, but why shouldn't we try to improve things on the firmware/software side, if it can be regulated at negligible cost? (the vendor releasing things instead of simply not)

As the Penny Arcade quip opined about engineered artificial scarcity: 'It's like we were given a universal assembler, and the first thing we chose to make was cancer.'

> There are also cases where manufacturers rely on intellectual property from third-party vendors and simply cannot release or open-source the code

I don't buy the 'but third-party IP' argument. If regulation existed that forced, then third parties that want to sell into the mobile market would license / assign IP under the terms they have to. (Or they'd get out of the market)

The unreleasable stack due to third party IP is a contract/market problem, not a fundamental universal truth.

> If regulation existed that forced, then third parties that want to sell into the mobile market would license / assign IP under the terms they have to.

> The unreleasable stack due to third party IP is a contract/market problem, not a fundamental universal truth.

That was my point. The regulation would not come at negligible cost. It is also entirely unreasonable to demand that manufacturers provide the source code for their firmware when all a user may actually want to do is install a different operating system. Some kind of SDK or developer kit with closed-source binaries should be sufficient for this, with the understanding that users would lose access to certain features, such as Apple Pay or Google Pay, as well as some security features relying on the chain of trust.

Why? Just because it's the status quo, doesn't mean it's a fact. Moreover, remember how Google wouldn't provide even basic support for more than 2-3 years until it became painfully oibvious that most people don't switch to a new phone every year? And oops, suddenly "it applied" that support can last for many years. Sometimes 11 as in the case of Android 6.

This whole thread started with me talking about my perfectly working iPad from 10 years ago. Why the hell shouldn't I get updates for it?

They don't have to. Open up the platform for linux and custom OS.

I don't know to what extend you could do a key update on illegitimate released. It seems you have bigger problems to worry about at that point.

To do it earlier you could have judges sign for release and require one or more judge keys to decrypt the vendor keys.

You can just stop to the last reason, they don't want to give up ownership back to you.

They would prefer you to throw the device in the bin and buy a new one, preferably from them again.

Also I doubt that there's anything left on 2015 era hardware that will grant you an edge on current age competitors

To give a reply:

> Can you freely tinker with your motherboard's firmware? Can you modify the Bluetooth or Wi-Fi firmware on your motherboard? Can you modify and independently update the internals of Windows itself? These are all examples of components that are proprietary and subject to limitations, even on what we would consider a "normal computer."

Yes I expect do be able to do all of those things if I want to, it's my computer and I should be free to do whatever I want on it. Including modifying firmware, modifying the OS and modifying anything else you can think of.

Do I want to do all of these? Probably not but the freedom for me to do it should be there if I change my mind. And no, it's a reasonable expectation.

> Yes I expect do be able to do all of those things if I want to

For the components I listed, and based on my understanding of "normal computers" as desktops and laptops, you cannot do all of these things today.

> it's my computer

It's their firmware. They don't magically give up their intellectual property rights when you purchase a piece of hardware from them.

What would be reasonable is providing access to datasheets, schematics, and manuals, where permitted by local laws, so that users can tinker with and develop for the hardware themselves. However, that shouldn't come with the expectation that the hardware's chain of trust remains intact or that all features will continue to function as they do with the OEM software.

And yes, I also support adding laws to force manufacturers to respect my rights.

> However, that shouldn't come with the expectation that the hardware's chain of trust remains intact or that all features will continue to function as they do with the OEM software.

I'm okay with that if the manufacturer doesn't remove features in bad faith (which they almost always do as there's very few legit uses on their side).

Again with the abstract. Provide an example of a manufacturer removing features in "bad faith." It is very likely that what you view as a "bad faith" action actually has a reasonable explanation from the manufacturer's perspective. This is especially true in cases of chain-of-trust and anti-tamper protections.

> I never stated that I own the intellectual property but I'm stating that I own the device and such

Technical specifications, datasheets, and similar materials can also constitute intellectual property of the manufacturer. Without access to these, you may not be able to "do any modification I see fit," especially when phrased so broadly that it could mean almost anything.

The only option I can see being somewhat feasible is for manufacturers to eventually release APIs with closed-source binaries, allowing users to create their own applications or operating systems.

This would, however, require regulation to ensure that manufacturers are allowed to provide these interfaces, as in some cases even the APIs themselves may be considered intellectual property, and manufacturers may not always be legally allowed to disclose them. Although it could be argued that if this is regulated, manufacturers would select vendors that can meet these regulatory demands.

The other issues to resolve here would be anti-tamper and chain-of-trust concerns that could arise from such an approach. However, if there were no expectation that users would continue to have access to the manufacturer's software or services, I think these issues could be resolved.

Sure, any app not running because of artificial software restrictions (and no, I won't buy the claims of """security""" when even the manufacturer doesn't have a real picture of what's running on the phone and cannot assess it's security - or sometimes even includes built-in adware!).

Another example of bad faith could be Apple removing true tone on official screen replacement.

Again, I'm not against the concept of chain of trust, it's just I've never seen any software restriction which I would think justified, so a good use case might exist in theory, I'm just not aware of it.

> The other issues to resolve here would be anti-tamper and chain-of-trust concerns that could arise from such an approach

I have serious doubts that integrity checks and anti-tamper mechanisms are legal in the current environment anyways as there's no real competition in the mobile space and these are further barrier to create competitors (and were even created for this purpose in the first place in some cases, like in Android)

It's definitely against current anti trust laws. These companies are just too large and too wealthy for the laws to be applied at the moment.

There's a 10 minute timer on HN to avoid discussions becoming too heated (at least AFAIK that's the reason).

> You are essentially asking them to adopt an open-source model. That can mean giving up control over its intellectual property and potentially exposing proprietary technology to competitors, especially when some products are valuable precisely because of the software that runs on them.

...and nothing wrong with that. The right-to-repair is mainly aimed at discontinued products anyway, at that point the "IP" is so old it doesn't require protection (and to be honest, the whole concept of long term "intellectual property" is bullshit anyway, just as long-term "copyright" - about 3 to 5 years is a reasonable time frame for 'exploiting' a novel idea, after that it should be free for all - at that time your competitors will have figured it out anyway).

In the 80s it was entirely normal to get parts lists, schematics and ROM listings when buying a computer for instance (and I guess other electronic devices too), there is absolutely no reason why access to the same information should be restricted today.

What you consider "old" may not be what I, or the manufacturer, consider "old." A lot of embedded development is incremental: you start with an existing codebase and continue building on it to meet new requirements. Occasionally, the entire system is rewritten from scratch, but that is not necessarily the case. Therefore, even software running on a discontinued product may contain code and intellectual property that is still actively used in newer products.

> and to be honest, the whole concept of long term "intellectual property" is bullshit anyway, just as long-term "copyright" - about 3 to 5 years is a reasonable time frame for 'exploiting' a novel idea, after that it should be free for all - at that time your competitors will have figured it out anyway

I believe you are confusing intellectual property and copyright with patents. If that is the case, I would largely agree. I would even go further and argue that many things that are allowed to be patented are ridiculous and not particularly novel at all. Some are so obvious that even a layperson could arrive at the same solution, which arguably should disqualify them from being patented in the first place. This is especially egregious in the standards world, where some companies hold patents on solutions that are intended to be standardized and used globally.

If, however, you are not confusing these terms, then I find your position absolutely ridiculous. It would be akin to asking Microsoft to release the source code for Windows, Office, Teams, Azure (although who wants to see that mess, am I right? lol) simply because "intellectual property" isn't a thing. That would outright destroy countless business models, and I can assure you that no major global or regional regulatory body is going to adopt that position.

> >>there is absolutely no reason why<< access to the same information should be restricted today.

There are plenty of reasons. You simply don't agree with them. That's perfectly fine, but claiming that there is "no reason" for things to work differently from how you want them to is simply ridiculous. Many of them I've mentioned in this post.

By not doing it you are basically outsourcing this cost to the environment.

Btw, it's difficult to believe the post is a good faith argument.

> it's difficult to believe the post is a good faith argument.

Right back at you, I guess.

I would understand the frustration if manufacturers were not upfront about how long they intend to support their hardware, although that is not always easy to predict. However, demanding that they support hardware indefinitely is unreasonable.

nobody demands that - it's more of the fact the hardware is locked and serialized, e.g. it won't accept a blue tooth module unless it's unlocked with proprietary software.

The hardware manufacturers spend quite the effort, so the devices are not open and require designated tools for minor fixes. I can imagine it not wanting to perform a warranty repair but that's the end of it.

Manufacturers have a regulatory obligation to prevent unauthorized combinations of software and hardware where those combinations could compromise the device's compliance. This is particularly relevant to radio firmware, including Bluetooth, where the manufacturer must ensure that the radio equipment remains compliant with the applicable regulatory requirements.

> The hardware manufacturers spend quite the effort

Because they are required to do so by regulation. Those regulations exist for good reason, for example to prevent unwanted interference in the radio spectrum.

Beyond regulatory requirements, manufacturers also have legitimate reasons for preventing unauthorized tampering with their devices. One concern is theft and device resale, while another is software security.

You may argue that you don't care about these things, which is perfectly fine. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and there is nothing inherently wrong with holding it. However, I would argue that this is not what the vast majority of customers expect, and that most would ultimately accept these constraints for the benefits they provide.

It's not. It's something they have to stop doing. Stop adding code that specifically stops third party software from running.

E.g.: "for example, you may not be allowed to provide access to the radio firmware." Given that everything has a radio these days (everything is wifi- and/or bluetooth- enabled), this is just stupid. Why is firmware for basically essential infra not legally available?

Same goes for many, many, many other things.

Manufacturers need to pass certification for their radio implementations, such as FCC, CE/RED, PTCRB, Bluetooth SIG, etc. Any modification to the radio firmware can potentially change the device's RF characteristics and cause it to fall outside of the conditions under which it was certified.

This is why manufacturers generally cannot simply release the radio firmware and allow users to modify it freely, as doing so could result in devices operating outside their certified RF parameters and expose them to regulatory or legal liability.

Not to mention the intellectual property rights of the manufacturer and their vendors. The firmware may contain proprietary code, algorithms, or other licensed technology that the manufacturer does not have the legal right to redistribute, especially if it was developed by a third-party vendor.

Why would this expose the manufacturer, and not the device owner?

> The firmware may contain proprietary code, algorithms, or other licensed technology that the manufacturer does not have the legal right to redistribute

As per my comment above: "Given that everything has a radio these days (everything is wifi- and/or bluetooth- enabled), this is just stupid. Why is firmware for basically essential infra not legally available?"

E.g. I don't buy the bullshit argument of security and legal something, and of proprietary algorithms, for example, when Philips suddenly starts requiring a log in to control its bulbs via bog standard protocols: https://hueblog.com/2023/09/21/philips-hue-soon-only-usable-...

The same goes for nearly everything else.

This may be the hope or expectation you have with regard to regulation, but I don't think it is ever going to happen because it would conflict with other regulatory requirements, especially in the realm of radio.

You may say "regulation can be changed" but radio regulations exist for real reasons and I doubt anyone could convince the major governing bodies otherwise.

Not to mention that such a requirement could effectively force companies to give up intellectual property that they have invested heavily in developing. What if a manufacturer outsources the firmware development to a vendor that specializes in firmware? If the manufacturer were required to release that firmware as open source, they would effectively be forcing that vendor to open-source its product. That could undermine the vendor's entire business model.

You're saying the chips in iPads etc. are not regulation-compliant and this non-compliance can be trivially unlocked if you know the specs?

The radio modules in iPads are compliant, assuming that the software using those radio modules is compliant as well. This is why manufacturers have to enforce specific combinations of software and hardware, as not all of the functionality and regulatory constraints are implemented in the hardware itself.

If you gain access to the radio module of an iPad, you can definitely make it non-compliant, depending on the level of access the module provides. In my experience, however, radio modules generally provide enough access that a user could potentially cause regulatory issues if the relevant safeguards were removed or you do not adhere to the specification of the radio protocol you are using.

If you don't believe me look at Bluetooth SIG listings and you will note that they specify specific software versions: https://qualification.bluetooth.com/Listings/Search

As I said elsewhere: everything has radio in them. But for some reason "users/repairshops cannot be trusted with this", so everything becomes ewaste in 2-4 years.

The great tragedy of non-compliant bluetooth keyboards and trackpads.

Allowing users install what they want on it would be the best case scenario.

Instead we have bullshit like "your TV is three years old? No updates for you": https://developer.samsung.com/smarttv/develop/specifications...

> They don't have to support it indefinitely.

How long should support for devices last in that case? And what should be supported?

Indeed. An ancient 3-year-old device isn't receiving any OS updates. Which means it doesn't get features, its core software isn't updated inculding such minor things as the browser (most apps on TVs are browser apps), store etc.

Eventually its certificates will expire and it won't be able to connect to most things

> How long should support for devices last in that case? And what should be supported?

Depends on device. People don't buy TVs every year. So a 10-year support isn't out of the question. That said, 10 years should probably be minimum for almost all hardware.

E.g. Microsoft supports Windows for ~10 years, and for a much wider array of hardware.

After that: open up, and let people do whatever they want with it.

In the "save the planet" times.