If getting right to repair passed requires justifying it via the military, I'm ok with that. I just hope they push to make it apply to civilians as well.
It doesn't seem like this is really related to a "right to repair". Even if no RtR legislation was passed, it would still be in the military's interest to require user serviceability for everything they purchase. They are a large enough consumer that they could make this requirement and the market would work to accommodate them.
I would argue they need to go even further - warranty. I’ve seen vehicles 100% maintained by contractors need full engine or power train replacements after 5000 miles of light driving. Never been off road, never been deployed, just shuttling people around the base completely inoperatable after less than 2 years. When you buy a car the manufacturer has some stake in the game still - even the limited warranty ensures that a major failure will cost them and not you. Government contracting doesn’t work like this. They sell a product, sell you service and then sell you parts. If that part is bad you, the American taxpayer, then has to buy another one. There is no such thing as returns or lemon laws when it comes to government purchases. You get what you get and hope for the best.
Would you rather pay up front and get a warranty or sign a long service contract with high bills?
The answer is the latter because paying more later is a form of borrowing, but not one you have to declare as debt. So you can announce a tax cut now and voters will love it despite paying twice as much next year.
They should go further & own (have full license to) the designs outright for the systems they procure.
There's so much talk about Modular Open Systems Architecture, because everyone agrees the current system is broken & doesn't allow iteration & exploration of systems. But it's so unclear technically what that means, how it happens. Maybe maybe things are a tiny bit better than they were but it's so hard to know, and it feels so likely to be lipservice, too hard to do & too little genuine desire to make it happen.
I think that there's a larger problem with defense contractors and the government just seeing these as ways certain people (usually the people in the Pentagon and Congress) can get rich or a cushy retirement gig, with no concern as to what actually happens past the contract being signed.
Otherwise a lot of this sort of thing would go without saying, and you wouldn't see problems like those surrounding the Sig Sauer P320/M17/M18.
A few years ago I went to a military museum in Vietnam, where they have a lot of equipment used by the US military on display -- helicopters, planes, guns, etc.
What surprised me is how the equipment had labels around where to open things to rescue people, where to pour fuel, etc... It was labelled such that someone with limited (or no) exposure to the vehicle model would know what to do without referencing any sort of manual.
Since armament forms a oligopsony market [1] (i.e. there exist few buyers (countries) for big armament), why don't these buyers simply use their market leverage and refuse to buy equipment for which the producer rejects them the right to repair.
A main problem to this is that contractors get money to do repairs and they use the reputation of their equipment to get future contracts. We would need to structure the contract so there's some flat maintenance portion to incentivize the production of easily serviced equipment.
Crazy to think we'd pay for software, ask for source to run a Fortify scan & whatnot, and get told to kick rocks. "Proprietary ... trade secrets ... &c&c". Just mark it green
> I was overseeing generators in theater, and the one powering the mortuary facility had failed. ... I didn’t have HVAC expertise or the necessary parts.
> I had two choices: initiate a long contracting process to hire a civilian technician
It sounds like the author couldn't have repaired the generator even if they had the right to do so? Or was this the kind of thing where they could have "figured it out" or carried a few spare parts?
Markets are not things that spontaneously form in their best version. When left unpruned and unregulated they grow into all sorts of abusive structures and relationships.
This should be the role of governments. To tend to the garden of economy. Sadly US government abdicates from that responsibility even more than governments of other countries. And even dumps a bunch of fertilizer on the weeds overgrowing the garden because they tickle it nicely.
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[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 32.3 ms ] threadIt isn't clear that this is about what we call "right to repair" on HN. (Essentially, no DRM on physical parts.)
Maybe it really is if I read the bill, but reading the article did not clarify that for me.
The answer is the latter because paying more later is a form of borrowing, but not one you have to declare as debt. So you can announce a tax cut now and voters will love it despite paying twice as much next year.
There's so much talk about Modular Open Systems Architecture, because everyone agrees the current system is broken & doesn't allow iteration & exploration of systems. But it's so unclear technically what that means, how it happens. Maybe maybe things are a tiny bit better than they were but it's so hard to know, and it feels so likely to be lipservice, too hard to do & too little genuine desire to make it happen.
Amazing lcs report, https://www.propublica.org/article/how-navy-spent-billions-l...
Otherwise a lot of this sort of thing would go without saying, and you wouldn't see problems like those surrounding the Sig Sauer P320/M17/M18.
What surprised me is how the equipment had labels around where to open things to rescue people, where to pour fuel, etc... It was labelled such that someone with limited (or no) exposure to the vehicle model would know what to do without referencing any sort of manual.
Very different today.
This should solve a lot of problems.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligopsony
Crazy to think we'd pay for software, ask for source to run a Fortify scan & whatnot, and get told to kick rocks. "Proprietary ... trade secrets ... &c&c". Just mark it green
> I was overseeing generators in theater, and the one powering the mortuary facility had failed. ... I didn’t have HVAC expertise or the necessary parts.
> I had two choices: initiate a long contracting process to hire a civilian technician
It sounds like the author couldn't have repaired the generator even if they had the right to do so? Or was this the kind of thing where they could have "figured it out" or carried a few spare parts?
This should be the role of governments. To tend to the garden of economy. Sadly US government abdicates from that responsibility even more than governments of other countries. And even dumps a bunch of fertilizer on the weeds overgrowing the garden because they tickle it nicely.