1. In the event of a bankruptcy proceeding, all source code for a hardware product shall be open-sourced.
2. In the event of a hardware product that is dependent upon cloud services being discontinued, instructions for "rooting" the product, and the firmware source code shall be open-sourced.
3. Companies that acquire the rights to patents of bankrupt companies and discontinued products must keep the cloud servers going or open-source blah blah.
The only serious counter argument I can think of here is the tangle of patents, to which I retort, the price of keeping the patents is keeping the furnaces powering the cloud servers running.
Am I crazy here?
It even sounds weaponizable: pick a competitor, get them to license some software to a shell company of yours, bankrupt the shell company, you kill the competitor and get their code to copy too. Except someone can do the same to you, so there's no point making proprietary software any more?
Please don’t let the following stop your thinking. We need many solutions.
FTA: He said that the company is no longer repairing exoskeletons older than five years because the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates the devices, has approved their usage for that timespan.
Really, there are cases where this is obviously a change that needs to happen. Eg, if a company holds personal data, the agreements that allowed a company to obtain it should live across bankruptcy with the data, not be terminated if it is transferred.
This sort of arrangement is common in real property. For example, if you buy a house where you have to access it via some other private land, the agreement that you can do so is arranged in such a way that it can't be voided when that land is sold, even during bankruptcy. You can't do that for data AFAIK (would love for a lawyer to comment). It needs to be enabled and made mandatory in cases like this.
There is some limited ability to do this: creditors can get a "charge" registered against intellectual property, so theoretically in the OP's case one might be able to design a legal construct that would cause a bankruptcy court to give rights to some special purpose vehicle that is set up (in advance) to represent the patients. But I don't know if that would work in all cases
There are tradeoffs from supporting-but-not-really-supporting unmaintained products. Also, in this case, it sounds like they were missing hardware that wouldn't have been fixed by publishing the software.
Like, if the metal fails and you have a horrible fall and break your hip and shoulder, that's pretty different from an iPhone that won't turn on.
If this is only approved for 5 years, shouldn't the guy be replacing it rather than repairing it? And shouldn't health insurance be covering that, at least beyond the deductible or whatever?
That's actually my point. There's an interesting policy discussion to be had here, and instead of starting it, they just decided to smear a company.
> Like, if the metal fails and you have a horrible fall and break your hip and shoulder, that's pretty different from an iPhone that won't turn on.
> If this is only approved for 5 years, shouldn't the guy be replacing it rather than repairing it? And shouldn't health insurance be covering that, at least beyond the deductible or whatever?
Probably, but (to throw out a hypothetical alternative) you can also imagine a situation where e.g. inspection can tell him if the whole device actually needs replacement.
I don't have the answer here - I just know I'd like the discussion to revolve around the merits of the situation.
You mean that the job would be done by shills then?
Why would anyone provide free labor otherwise?
The government could require that manufacturers either supply replacement parts or specs for someone else to manufacture them. I suppose the latter would be required to avoid gouging. It'd be interesting to think about the secondary effects—if you can't make a lot of money off of service, will you make longer-lasting products and charge appropriately?
It should not force companies to build parts for you. Forcing people to do work they do not want to is insane. That kind of talk would prevent me from building anything and letting my neighbor borrow it.
And no, saying "it wouldnt apply to you just <insert demographic>" doesn't make me feel any better about that.
Does "We won't send you this part we already built and currently have in stock, and we won't send you a schematic for it either. You must reverse engineer it and build it yourself if you want to resume being able to walk and control your bowels and bladder" constitute forcing a person to do work they do not want to?
If a company is unable to provide long-term support in the form of replacement parts, then they shouldn't be allowed to sell it to consumers. For decades, and for most devices, it was trivial to find replacement parts and/or swap out identical parts, even if they weren't made by the original manufacturer. You can get replacement parts for cars made in the 90s, 80s, 70s.
It should not be acceptable to buy something as important and life-changing and expensive as this exoskeleton, and the manufacturer just fucks off and provides no way to maintain it long-term.
Freedom doesn't exist. Every corporation is bound by laws and regulations. "Forcing people to do work they do not want to". We aren't talking about regular people like you or me. We're talking about corporations. They're regularly "forced" to do things they don't want to, to the benefit of their customers and society as a whole. You need better arguments if you want to argue against regulating companies.
Forcing companies to support cutting-edge prototypes (like exoskeleton) for decades is the best way to ensure there won't be any company making them.
When the earliest cars/PCs were pushed to the market, did the government tell the manufacturers that they have to provide parts for decades, otherwise they'll be punished in this or that way?
Not a rhetorical questions. I genuinely don't know the answer. But adminttedly I'd be quite surprise if the answer is yes.
This seems like a stretch for anything other than cars, pcs, and large appliances. I doubt this has been true for a long time for anything under $100 and more electrically complicated than a switch and a motor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReWalk
Now they seemingly cost $100k+
Unless the company has stagnated, the tech and parts would improve overtime where they no longer match.
But also, would you want a third party to continue producing the parts? Seems like a security leak there.
For most repair parts, no. Especially not since need for such a device is anticorrelated with earnings. The article's complainant, being a disabled former jockey, probably make <40K in the years leading up to his accident and little to none in the years since.
Also, genuinely I’d be interested in helping this guy hack his exoskeleton to let it work again.
Also, this line is beyond ridiculous:
"Straight’s path to paralysis started in the 1990s at the Saratoga Race Course".
https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/cdrh_docs/reviews/den130034.p...
The problem here, of course, is it's not the device itself, but the simple remote control peripheral that is designed to switch device operating modes.
The FDA should force manufacturers of "two piece" systems like this to have backup controls on the device itself and to exclude these non-medical components designed for control from any regulation covering "intended design life."
It seems like a daffy middle ground that the FDA lets exist and manufacturers take advantage of when they can.
I would guess the FDA makes their certification easier or harder to pass based on how long the device is expected to last. If the 5 year lifespan is what hits the middle ground for that company between cost-of-certification and useful-product-life, then it's up to the FDA to make a longer lifespan feasible to get certified.
Edit: Seems odd that the loophole is big enough to allow not even uploading the full documentation.
It seems abundantly reasonable that a similar requirement be imposed for prosthesis. And it would also be very reasonable for the required period to be longer than that of cars.
So yeah, not forever, but definitely not a a short period either.
I think this was something that used to be regulated but is not now. There's plenty of financial justification for supporting cars 10 or more years by making parts, since most last longer than that. For niche products that are practically one-offs, I can see where it might need to be regulated because the economics won't encourage it.
I don't know if there's a law.
In this specific case, the real issue is just the incredibly short service lifetime. While different medical devices are going to have different lifetimes, manufacturers need to continue to provide support for at least 36 months after reporting that they plan to discontinue support, which is 60% of the lifetime of this product. Typically medical devices are supported for much longer.
> They shouldn't be making such unnecessary proprietary components.
Perhaps not, but that's not right to repair. Pretty much everything in any modern smartphone is completely proprietary.
And as the article said, the battery wasn't proprietary. The missing part was the battery connector. That doesn't even suggest to me that it's wildly proprietary, just that it can't be found anymore. Lots of components that are easily sourced now would be challenging for an ordinary person to source in a decade.
> at end of life the specifications should be made public so that a third party can manufacture them.
This also isn't right to repair. In fact, it probably doesn't help much at all: a sufficiently specialized part on a specialized medical device is going to be so niche that the cost of an aftermarket part will be huge. There's probably what, twenty of these things in the wild? A hundred? How many aftermarket manufacturers will even pick up the phone for a one-off custom part, spec or no?
> manufacturers need to continue to provide support for at least 36 months after reporting that they plan to discontinue support, which is 60% of the lifetime of this product
The device was supported for the regulatory limit of five years, and the owner has been using it for ten. Assuming they did give three years of support after discontinuing the product, it's now two years beyond that.
For a product only approved to be sold for five years by a regulator, I think the fact that the only piece that couldn't be serviced after double that time is a battery connector is pretty impressive (all things considered). Customer service aside, I'm not sure how much more you could possibly ask from this company.
If you offered 1% of the entire device's replacement price, for a part that the average tinkerer could build, I think you'd find a stampede of competent offers. I'm sure much lower amounts would work too.
That would depend entirely upon the part.
With (detailed) specs being available, quite a lot of skilled repair techs would be able to bodge something competent together (!) to meet those specs.
Re-manufacturing completely 100% good parts could be a thing sure, for sufficient volumes.
But real world situations for low volumes tend to be "lets get it working well enough using the tools we have available". Creativity is required. ;)
The results for those situations are improved dramatically if there's detailed, good quality docs easily accessible to the people working on it.
Yes, and also why products should be open sourced and documented when they're declared obsolete by their manufacturer, or the manufacturer cease operations. Let people be responsible for all repairs they do to their devices; this man would probably not give a damn about regulations if the alternative was essentially to become paralyzed again.
He just needs a part. (They did eventually send it to him.) If they had not, he doesn't need the right to repair it, rather would need someone to manufacture the part.
That would enable people to organise getting replacements manufactured themselves. :)
That's just (!) under current FDA regulations though yeah?
It's not like they're forever unchangeable.
Right to repair, in a broad sense, also covers access to parts. This is definitely an edge case and we might want to just consider that if we're going to do experiments on disabled with the aim of helping them, and they want to continue using the tools, we might have to subsidize access to the parts until they die.
Right to repair is a negative right. There’s no reason to turn it into a positive one.
And the real meat of the comment is the part about forcing companies to make and sell things.
So for my definition, what makes this an edge case is specifically it's expensive medical equipment that a disabled user can't pay to acquire a part for, and companies aren't willing to produce anyway because it's so niche. 99% of equipment probably falls under "I want to repair it and someone (myself or a repair company) wants to fix it" or "I don't want to repair it because it's so expensive". The rest would be the edge case where you want to repair it and you literally can't afford to - even if you could produce the parts.
By the way, I hate this article, I just want the information and not have to parse an entire goddamn magazine to get to it.
Even the pentagon can’t force that, they just pay a large amount of money to a new company to recreate the original part to the exact same spec.
Theoretically it’s possible to enact new legislation to mandate that something sufficient must be set aside in some sort of escrow system, and punish companies for not doing so, but that would probably result in most manufacturing companies fleeing the US….
> And although that coverage doesn’t extend to paraplegics who have injuries to their spine as high up as Straight
Oh man, i feel for everyone who live in the USA and require any sort of medical help. Either you spend all your hard earned money or you got to get in a though fight with the medical administration.
This is the only option in other countries with gov provided healthcare.
I heard from a mobility scooter technician that there is barely any second market for the as typically the health insurance will get you a new one every few years. So similar to the companies response to just buy the newest model.
We actually don’t know the second part. What we know is that the company claimed that regulations were involved. Might or might not be true.
Wouldn’t be the first time when a company didn’t want to do something for financial reasons and they decided to read the regulations in a way which made them more money.