I own a Tesla, which is essentially a computer on wheels. Much of the way the car works is driven by software, which I love. New features have appeared and minor fixes come through in the same way that they do for apps on my mobile device. It can be annoying to wait for an update to install, which has happened when my wife or I start the update remotely and don’t realize the other is planning on driving. Fortunately, I can set these to run overnight from my phone and they mostly disappear into the background.
I don’t worry about Tesla failing, at least, that hasn’t been on my mind, but I ran into this article about a company in China that is failing. The WM Motor Company filed for bankruptcy, and perhaps coincidently, their app stopped working. Owners couldn’t manage basic functions. The company put the server back up, but that brings up a bit of a concern for software that depends on external connections.
This raises concerns for Fisker in the US, and really, for any sort of device that one might buy that could depend on an Internet connection for operation. It’s one thing to have updates and options, it’s another for a device to just stop working because the company is gone.
Consumers don’t have a lot of power with regard to software companies, but we do have some. As software becomes more prevalent and important in other parts of our lives, I would advocate for some sort of open-sourcing of software in live devices if companies fail, or even if they decide to discontinue support. I have a 23-year-old car that works fine, and I can get parts. Dealers don’t want to work on it, and it has been a challenge at times to find OEM parts, but there are plenty of third parties.
We ought to have third parties in software as well.
Most of you work for a company, which often makes its own software. If your company abandons a piece of software, everyone adapts and moves on. Even if your company sells a service, it makes sense they could discontinue the service. However, when you sell a physical product or even a physical install of software, I think you ought to give customers a way to maintain their system if you decide to stop doing so.
Update: another issue with Fisker (SMH)
Steve Jones
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Excellent point Steve. I’ve also worked with software that was bought by another company while I was still using it. The original company had a comprehensive technical site available for support. But the new company completely discarded it, so basically support for the software was gone overnight, without much warning.
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I hate that. We need 3rd parties, and companies need to embrace their ecosystem in this area, and make resources available. Especially if they close off a product, the docs/specs/manuals/parts should still be available.
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Every time I see something like this, I think of Adama and Battle Star Galactica.
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LOL, that’s great.
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No complex/expensive piece of consumer equipment should be such that if the manufacturer closes or goes bust it means owners of that product are SOL in terms of getting repairs/updates. I believe that ion exchange for copyright protectoi0ojn a company must agree that if it closes it’s doors for whatever reason it must by law either release the source code or provided an open source alternative. People should not be dependent on a business once the sale is done. If a car company shuts down there is always going to b some percentage of customers who recently purchased an item from that company and now their SOL and only after a short period of time.
This all goes back to R2R (Right to Repair) which involves more than just software although software is probably now a bigger issues than physical parts. I was always fine with software copyright protection because people should have some length of time to profit from what they create but if you close your doors you shouldn’t be able to leave customers high & dry. I believe Congress (in America ) is going to have to revisit the Digital Millennium Copyright act and far sooner then they probably imagined when they passed it in 1992. Within the 30 years since then software has made leaps and bounds and the existing act is just not able to do what is needed; it needs revisions and additions and SOON. Whether the lazy in government will get off their butts and doing something without some large entity bribing them to do it is anyone’s guess.
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Completely agreed. In general, I don’t want government regulating things, but I think they should require some level of support or openness. If companies are purchased, this also applies. Buying a product from someone to reduce competition is fine, but you can’t hide all the docs or prevent third parties from assisting companies.
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