While it is certainly nice to have continued support, I think I’d disagree that forcing companies to maintain software on legacy/outdated hardware is something that should be legislated. I think that would greatly stifle innovation in a lot of cases.
I’d be a supporter of something like @[email protected]’s suggestion, though. If they are no longer able to support security updates, then they should open it up to be able to maintain it yourself/community-maintainable. Expecting a company to maintain support through continued development on a 10 or 20 year old device that in some cases may not even be physically able to handle the updates is a big ask.
I’m not saying I think it would be a bad thing for support to continue. I just don’t think it should be legally required. If a small company decided to develop and produce a device, knowing they’d have to perpetually support it, legally, makes it exponentially cumbersome to continue further development. Newer software may not be able to run on older hardware, meaning they’d have to develop and maintain multiple versions of any security fix. For Apple, it’d hardly be a problem (financially) to continue support.
On the other hand, I understand that this creates a situation where new phones keep being churned out that are hardly different hardware-wise. It’d be lame to stop supporting the older devices just to push people to buy another one (Apple). There’s probably some middle ground to be found here.
While it is certainly nice to have continued support, I think I’d disagree that forcing companies to maintain software on legacy/outdated hardware is something that should be legislated. I think that would greatly stifle innovation in a lot of cases.
I’d be a supporter of something like @[email protected]’s suggestion, though. If they are no longer able to support security updates, then they should open it up to be able to maintain it yourself/community-maintainable. Expecting a company to maintain support through continued development on a 10 or 20 year old device that in some cases may not even be physically able to handle the updates is a big ask.
At a minimum, stuff should be put in place to allow for people to update legacy hardware to be maintained by individuals.
I mean, Apple does it for 10 years old devices and it’s not stopping them from churning out phones every year
I’m not saying I think it would be a bad thing for support to continue. I just don’t think it should be legally required. If a small company decided to develop and produce a device, knowing they’d have to perpetually support it, legally, makes it exponentially cumbersome to continue further development. Newer software may not be able to run on older hardware, meaning they’d have to develop and maintain multiple versions of any security fix. For Apple, it’d hardly be a problem (financially) to continue support.
On the other hand, I understand that this creates a situation where new phones keep being churned out that are hardly different hardware-wise. It’d be lame to stop supporting the older devices just to push people to buy another one (Apple). There’s probably some middle ground to be found here.