How about splitting the difference like locking the bootloader at point of sale with guaranteed period for updates? After the period has lapsed, allow users to unlock the bootloader to extend with custom software upgrades or, a subscription base to continue with original POS policy.
This weirdly intersects for the Right to Repair movement, or for consumers whom would rather be conservative on new device purchases and software licenses.
Reminds me of the idea I've been thinking about - kind of unrelated - but once a device is officially no longer supported by a company - particularly consoles and online games - they should make the source code available so people can continue from there on their own.
I've thought about that before too. As soon as something is no longer actively supported, it should become open for people to maintain themselves. Unfortunately, there's a lot of companies that would fight that with as much money as it takes, so it would never happen (at least not in the US)
It actively goes against their profit interests. If they deprecate the older devices and leave them as black boxes, that's another way to push consumers to buying the new stuff.
Something like this would have to be done with regulation.
Shares some similarities with the gradual corruption of copyright over the years, extending it out into infinity (thanks Disney!), companies would rather hold close the things they refuse to use than give them to the people once they have no more profit to be made off of them.
If only they would frame it as an environmental concern/issue as well, eg: properly dealing with e-waste. Why purchase a device that can be systematically deprecated within a short life cycle when such things can be repaired and/or otherwise be repurposed?
I would like to see a graph of average second hand prices of different abandoned products over time. Mark the interesting points like apple not supporting the next version of the OS or blocking app downloads. Perhaps an income estimate of the average user at the interesting points could also be included and/or sales figures of still supported versions.
Ideally, companies should be forced to deposit everything needed for manufacturing a product - 3D designs, software toolchains, PCBs, BOMs, service tooling - at the national archives to be held in trust.
Once the manufacturer ceases supporting a product, everything becomes open source.
This is kind of solved by Right to Repair legislation. It would prevent companies from making exclusivity deals and force them to allow this stuff to be sold to the public - not that they have to sell it themselves, but their partners would be free to.
I don't know if putting the government in charge of maintaining all of that would be the best idea.
This weirdly intersects for the Right to Repair movement, or for consumers whom would rather be conservative on new device purchases and software licenses.