Microsoft stumbled when they forgot that, while they had a student discount for their products, the real reason so many young people came into the job market with Windows experience was piracy.
When they went after businesses for piracy, people were mostly okay with that. When deep pockets are fined that does not lead to moral outrage. When they made it very difficult to pirate, they injured the hobbyist market.
There is definitely a place in the world for low margin products aimed at fairness and advertising. And with hardware, ignoring piracy doesn’t really work, so there are really only two options. Subsidized sales, or a very robust resale market. The latter requires explicit support for First Sale Doctrine, products designed for repair, and narrow enough gaps between new and old hardware that the newest stuff is attractive but not mandatory. Do some of those but not the other and you get accused of paying lip service but having no solution. And for the most part they are right.
There are YouTube videos of people buying eight broken Nintendo handhelds and trying to salvage 5 working devices out of them. These are noteworthy because it’s harder than it should be, and sometimes these people lose money on the project, only breaking even from the YouTube royalties. If social justice were a goal, you’d need to at least double that success rate, maybe more.
If someone is smart enough to turn eight broken Nintendo handhelds into five working ones their skills would probably be better put to something more useful.
You can be good at more than one thing in your life. If all you do is program you’ve hamstrung yourself badly. Some people see it and course correct, others become old men, full of regret.
I’ve known of two bike clubs that would refurbish old bikes for kids. Once you learn enough maintenance to trust your own repairs at speeds and distances most people avoid, doing repairs for others isn’t much of a stretch. Fixing calculators or tablets or game boys wouldn’t be a full time job. A lot of social projects are volunteer or nonprofit.
Aside from a lack of empathy this just isn’t true. TV repair shops aren’t the great career they used to be; you can’t make a living on basic soldering skills, a Radio Shack catalog, patience and elbow grease, and a good set of screwdrivers anymore.
When they went after businesses for piracy, people were mostly okay with that. When deep pockets are fined that does not lead to moral outrage. When they made it very difficult to pirate, they injured the hobbyist market.
There is definitely a place in the world for low margin products aimed at fairness and advertising. And with hardware, ignoring piracy doesn’t really work, so there are really only two options. Subsidized sales, or a very robust resale market. The latter requires explicit support for First Sale Doctrine, products designed for repair, and narrow enough gaps between new and old hardware that the newest stuff is attractive but not mandatory. Do some of those but not the other and you get accused of paying lip service but having no solution. And for the most part they are right.
There are YouTube videos of people buying eight broken Nintendo handhelds and trying to salvage 5 working devices out of them. These are noteworthy because it’s harder than it should be, and sometimes these people lose money on the project, only breaking even from the YouTube royalties. If social justice were a goal, you’d need to at least double that success rate, maybe more.