Posted on September 18th, 2021 at 23:38 Susan Bradley Comment on the AskWoody Lounge Or maybe they aren’t ignoring the future so much as trying to manage it by speeding up product obsolescence, because it typically sparks another purchase. We should mandate that device manufacturers set aside a portion of the purchase price of a gadget to support ongoing software maintenance, forcing them to budget for a future they’d rather ignore. I’d argue that there should be a parallel right-to-maintain movement. We have seen a global right-to-repair movement emerge from maker communities and start to influence public policy around such things as the availability of spare parts. That’s bad for consumers and bad for the planet. This corporate stinginess consigns far too many of our devices to the trash heap before they have exhausted their usability.
As a result, many of them are apt to drop support for old gadgets faster than the gadgets themselves wear out. Doing so costs the manufacturer some of its profits. Consumers have relied on the good graces of device makers to keep our gadget firmware and software secure and up-to-date.
