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In an ideal world, IoT and smart device manufacturers would be required to pay for “end of life” insurance. Ridiculous that a company can brick your devices by

In an ideal world, IoT and smart device manufacturers would be required to pay for “end of life” insurance. Ridiculous that a company can brick your devices by shutting down their servers and/or going out of business. Some people have suggested forcing companies to open source their software on death so that someone, somewhere might be able to keep the smart devices alive but this is difficult implications for capitalizing hardware companies and probably causes more problems than it’s worth. That’s why, instead I think we should make hardware companies which produce “smart” devices dependent on their software to function should be required to do what we make banks do: pay for the risk of their own failure.

leohonexus 3y ago
If a HW company is shutting down due to financial difficulties, the fact they previously paid to get a "license" to make smart devices won't be any incentive for them to continue operating. How does this help the situation other than to further raise the barrier of starting HW companies?
- AbrahamParangi 3y ago
  It’s a failure fund, it pays for a skeleton team or third party contractor or whatever to keep the lights on. It’s intended to be actual insurance, where you pay the premiums forever based on some assessed cost of maintaining your products for 5 years (or pick your timeframe) or refunding your users, whichever is cheaper. Making hardware companies even harder definitely isn’t great but I don’t see how else to deal with the fact that if I buy a toaster that connects to your toaster cloud and my toaster stops working when you go out of business- I am out one smart toaster that you sold me. Best case scenario I have a regular toaster and worst case I have a brick. I’m not asking if that’s legal, mind you. I’m asking if that’s fair, if a reasonable person would call that fair? While the company itself is fully aware of the risk that it might not exist tomorrow, it’s customers typically aren’t.

leohonexus 3y ago

If a HW company is shutting down due to financial difficulties, the fact they previously paid to get a "license" to make smart devices won't be any incentive for them to continue operating. How does this help the situation other than to further raise the barrier of starting HW companies?

AbrahamParangi 3y ago
It’s a failure fund, it pays for a skeleton team or third party contractor or whatever to keep the lights on. It’s intended to be actual insurance, where you pay the premiums forever based on some assessed cost of maintaining your products for 5 years (or pick your timeframe) or refunding your users, whichever is cheaper. Making hardware companies even harder definitely isn’t great but I don’t see how else to deal with the fact that if I buy a toaster that connects to your toaster cloud and my toaster stops working when you go out of business- I am out one smart toaster that you sold me. Best case scenario I have a regular toaster and worst case I have a brick. I’m not asking if that’s legal, mind you. I’m asking if that’s fair, if a reasonable person would call that fair? While the company itself is fully aware of the risk that it might not exist tomorrow, it’s customers typically aren’t.