Hacker News Reader

Hence why closed source firmware should be illegal

Why? If that would be the case they would only sell in the higher price tier. Currently, the more expensive product covers most of the R&D of the cheaper product.

Because by allowing companies to market segment through software they inherently have to cripple the ability to repair products/right-to-repair.

Yes, from a user perspective I would like more repairable hardware. I also see that developing hardware is hard. These things are complex and any modification could cost thousands of dollars. It's not black and white.

Most user doesn't care about repairability. I don't see a lot of people buy the Fairphone. They complain about John Deere but don't look for alternatives. They always chose the cheaper alternatives.

If we could somehow separate the development cost and the manufacturing cost, we could get super repairable hardware. Just like with OSS. If someone sponsors the development the product is great otherwise commercial software wins.

And forcing companies to make the of their firmware source code available would fix all of this.

The market will always steer everyone to the lowest common denominator and as a result fails when the externalities of pollution and e-waste are concerned.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com