Hey, thank you! I've just added it https://www.marcia.no/rss.xml (I'm only starting to write and forcing myself to write one article a day, so I'm afraid not every day will be worth your time)
Most systems now "fail closed" because they are based on a code signing chain of trust that has no exceptions. It would be better if some portion of these systems were made to "fail open" - you don't want a botnet to take over in this situation but you should be able to delegate code signing duties to a new party when the original one goes under or stops supporting a device.
Dumping responsibility on "the community" could backfire in a big way. It sounds good at small scale but it becomes a form of entitlement if the whole industry does it.
It’s pointless anyway because there is always someone in the community who comes along and rips out support for old hardware. Because, you know, EOL, doesn’t matter that it’s a stationary target.
> What I am asking for: publish a basic GitHub repo with the hardware specs and connection protocols. Let the community build their own apps on top of it.
This concept works fine for the author's example of a kitchen scale, but fails when the device in question is something like a router that has secure boot with one key burned into e-fuses.
In that case we need both open software and a requirement that the manufacturer escrow signing keys with someone so that after EOL any software can be run.
Forcing the release of signing keys would be a security disaster. The first person to grab the expired domain for the auto update server for a IoT device now gets a free botnet.
The only real way to make devices securely re-usable with custom firmware requires some explicit steps and action to signal that the user wants to run 3rd-party firmware: A specific button press sequence is enough. You need to require the user to do something explicit to acknowledge that 3rd-party software is being installed, though.
Forcing vendors to release their security mechanisms to the public and allow anyone to sign firmware as the company is not what you want, though.
Locked bootloader should just be competely forbidden, even for brand new devices. Hardware and phone owners have the right to make any change they see fit on their device, no matter if the manufacturer thinks it's ok or not.
> Now, I'm not asking companies to open-source their entire codebase. That's unrealistic when an app is tied to a larger platform. What I am asking for: publish a basic GitHub repo with the hardware specs and connection protocols. Let the community build their own apps on top of it.
The actual proposal in this blog doesn’t make much sense. Having the specs of a device isn’t going to change much because they can be determined by anyone examining the PCB. Most devices don’t have a simple connection protocol, like the Spotify Car Thing used as an example.
I understand the idea as "provide what is necessary for someone to reuse the hardware". Just the bare minimum, like how to flash a firmware and a minimal firmware.
Now for many products, nobody would spend the time needed to make it actually work, but for some it may be nice.
But I agree that it is more complicated than it seems, and realistically that would be on a case by case basis.
One great example/case for this would be Aura Frames (recommended to me by a few folks here when I posted an Ask HN) [0]
If the company disappears... what happens to the devices and the cloud storage?
I've been really enjoying the product (it's really well done, the mobile app works perfectly well) but it's a scary thought.
I also found this Reddit thread [1] with some language from the company supposedly saying they would do their best to launch alternative tooling if they disappeared, but I can't find this language anywhere else online.
I have had an itch to disect an Aura frame and do something akin to the Tonie Box jailbreak. But I am too afraid of being responsible for bricking our frame and I can't justify spending the money on one just for R&D.
Probably be the same as the email addresses for the Kodak Pulse Frame, or Sony Dash, both really awesome products that the manufacturer just killed the backend services and bricked them to an extent.
In my experience, whenever you mandate open source software, you get software so unusable that it might as well be closed-source. Like, it doesn't compile, and they ignore all bug reports.
if EOL hardware become open source and community can support it then community would extend that EOL product and making it extensively harder for older customer to buy new product
I love to see this future but knowing this, company would never do this
I totally agree with the frustration of having hardware I would like to keep using but can't because it got EOL. Like a smart speaker or something.
But I don't know if there is a pragmatic way to approach that. I mean, I could also say "it should be illegal to produce e-waste", but what does that mean and how do we actually do it?
> And here's the thing: with vibe-coding making development more accessible than ever, this isn't just for hardcore developers anymore. Regular users can actually tinker with this stuff now.
Have you tried pointing an LLM agent at a decompiled apk? It could probably write you protocol docs for it.
Dear EU Santa, please force Meta to open source the Facebook Portal as well so I can repurpose relatively decent hardware for something useful and fun, rather than e-waste.
I actually think this is a great idea. Not even for "Open Source".
Can you imagine if UBNT had to open source its EOL boot chain, so that Cambium was legally entitled to roll its firmware for old Unifi kit? And Vice Versa?
The result might not be "Old hardware supported by the community" the result might be "Eternal product updates so we can legally prevent Cambium from taking our customers"
Nice concept, yet, this isn't realistic but for a few special cases.
In simple terms, if a company has a continuum of products of a certain category over time, the designs (hardware, software, manufacturing, testing, etc.) are typically evolutionary in nature.
This means that product B inherits from product A, C from B, etc. When product C goes to market, A and B might be EOL. Open sourcing anything related to product C means relinquishing their intellectual property.
Nobody in their right mind would do that unless a unique set of conditions are in place to have that make sense. In general terms, this does not happen.
I disagree. The average consumer needs to be educated that if a remote server can brick a device you have already paid money for, you do not own it. It has been leased.
The economics of leasing vs buying are well understood by the general public. Allow them to make an honest decision at the time of purchase.
How about requiring all APIs to be open? Companies are free to run/maintain/drop servers and apps, but we'd have the ability to use the hardware we bought, if we write our own apps.
That might actually be good for security. If APIs must be public, proper cloud security becomes necessary (rather than relying on obscurity).
Phones that don't get updates for 12 months also should be required to unlock their bootloaders, so a 3rd party ROM can be installed, or at least Magisk can be loaded.
Mediatek devices are beyond hope, but some could be saved this way that are otherwise trash.
I think you should be allowed to stop supporting a hardware device without open sourcing the software, full stop. I just think that's the least bad option.
I'd be fine if manufacturers had to have some kind of standard "nutrition facts" label of what will happen to its functionality if support is ended.
Instead of trying to regulate everything, perhaps it would be better if consumers educated themselves and did not buy devices that do not run locally using open protocols in the first place. For me, it's a hard requirement -- I will not buy a "smart" anything device that isn't supported offline by Home Assistant. This restricts my choice set, but so be it. Sometimes, it means doing more work. I won't buy a Ring camera, so I had to build my own system using generic RTSP cameras, some hard drives and a PC.
A huge feature of copyright is that it is time-limited. When the copyright period expires, it passes into the public domain and belongs to everybody.
There are two major things that undermine this for software: copyright durations, and lack of source code. Software copyright durations should be at most a few years, and to be eligible for copyright, software should have its source code published or at minimum held in escrow, so that when the copyright expires it is still useful.
We already require patents to be published in exchange for the protection we give them; software copyright needs to be the same.
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.
50 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 59.7 ms ] thread...although it could be "no more product support, talk to random people on github"
actually, don't know why there couldn't be legislative or tax support for these kinds of things.
This concept works fine for the author's example of a kitchen scale, but fails when the device in question is something like a router that has secure boot with one key burned into e-fuses.
In that case we need both open software and a requirement that the manufacturer escrow signing keys with someone so that after EOL any software can be run.
The only real way to make devices securely re-usable with custom firmware requires some explicit steps and action to signal that the user wants to run 3rd-party firmware: A specific button press sequence is enough. You need to require the user to do something explicit to acknowledge that 3rd-party software is being installed, though.
Forcing vendors to release their security mechanisms to the public and allow anyone to sign firmware as the company is not what you want, though.
The actual proposal in this blog doesn’t make much sense. Having the specs of a device isn’t going to change much because they can be determined by anyone examining the PCB. Most devices don’t have a simple connection protocol, like the Spotify Car Thing used as an example.
Now for many products, nobody would spend the time needed to make it actually work, but for some it may be nice.
But I agree that it is more complicated than it seems, and realistically that would be on a case by case basis.
If the company disappears... what happens to the devices and the cloud storage?
I've been really enjoying the product (it's really well done, the mobile app works perfectly well) but it's a scary thought.
I also found this Reddit thread [1] with some language from the company supposedly saying they would do their best to launch alternative tooling if they disappeared, but I can't find this language anywhere else online.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45341781
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/homeautomation/comments/1b8vei3/wha...
I love to see this future but knowing this, company would never do this
But I don't know if there is a pragmatic way to approach that. I mean, I could also say "it should be illegal to produce e-waste", but what does that mean and how do we actually do it?
Have you tried pointing an LLM agent at a decompiled apk? It could probably write you protocol docs for it.
It is if you buy carefully: I don't buy hardware that can't be used with linux or whatever I deem necessary. And then, there's the car...
Can you imagine if UBNT had to open source its EOL boot chain, so that Cambium was legally entitled to roll its firmware for old Unifi kit? And Vice Versa?
The result might not be "Old hardware supported by the community" the result might be "Eternal product updates so we can legally prevent Cambium from taking our customers"
In simple terms, if a company has a continuum of products of a certain category over time, the designs (hardware, software, manufacturing, testing, etc.) are typically evolutionary in nature.
This means that product B inherits from product A, C from B, etc. When product C goes to market, A and B might be EOL. Open sourcing anything related to product C means relinquishing their intellectual property.
Nobody in their right mind would do that unless a unique set of conditions are in place to have that make sense. In general terms, this does not happen.
The economics of leasing vs buying are well understood by the general public. Allow them to make an honest decision at the time of purchase.
That might actually be good for security. If APIs must be public, proper cloud security becomes necessary (rather than relying on obscurity).
Mediatek devices are beyond hope, but some could be saved this way that are otherwise trash.
I'd be fine if manufacturers had to have some kind of standard "nutrition facts" label of what will happen to its functionality if support is ended.
There are two major things that undermine this for software: copyright durations, and lack of source code. Software copyright durations should be at most a few years, and to be eligible for copyright, software should have its source code published or at minimum held in escrow, so that when the copyright expires it is still useful.
We already require patents to be published in exchange for the protection we give them; software copyright needs to be the same.
- this also extends to software
- when it has been 25 yrs since a game has released, you are no longer making money from your game big time
- companies should be forced to open source their games at this point in time
- so that we can revive games that companies like ubisoft keep shutting down and removing from steam libraries completely
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.