[LINK] throw-away culture

grove at zeta.org.au grove at zeta.org.au
Mon Jan 22 17:56:14 AEDT 2007


On Mon, 22 Jan 2007, Howard Lowndes wrote:

> It's also something that Linux users are good at too.  But just think of the 
> new hardware demands after Jan 30 - thank you Microsoft.

Who else thinks that certain peripheral devices that require some 
sort of driver should by law be forced to release the driver API 
to the public so that the hardware can be run on future technology?

For example, I have 3 Emagic MIDI interfaces, that when combined
make a 24 Port interface, that is incredibly important to my music 
production environment.

Emagic was bought out by Apple a few years ago now and their products
were subsumed and the hardware products are no longer produced.

However, the MIDI interfaces are still usable, except on the PC,
where the driver support dropped off the map somewhere at Win2000 
and so a perfectly good piece of hardware with a definite core functionality
is made artificially unusable in that environment.

Now the MacOS has moved to Intel, there are credible fears that Apple
could kill driver support for the hardware, although there's nothing 
stopping the hardware from being supported natively.

If they choose to kill off the driver support, then me and about 20,000 
others are hosed - we won't have a quality product to drive our synths 
with.

There should be a large warning label on the front of any product that
relies on computer support for it's drivers, to mention that 
the provisioning of such a product is null and void if the OS support
exceeds the driver version supplied.

So, I believe in the interests of consumer choice and so on, that 
any product of whatever type should by default, have the driver 
sources released to the Public Domain at the point in time that 
there is a cessation of releases of driver updates for various OS.

It would cost the hardware vendor nothing and reassure customers
and users that their investment is not wasted in the future and 
also becomes a means to stop the industrial waste cycle where
perfectly usable products are scrapped for no other reason 
than a bit of firmware is locked up by a company for no apparent
reason other than planned obsolescence.


rachel


-- 
Rachel Polanskis                 Kingswood, Greater Western Sydney, Australia
grove at zeta.org.au                http://www.zeta.org.au/~grove/grove.html
 	"They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security,
 	deserve neither liberty or security" - Benjamin Franklin, 1759



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