Comments by "Matthew Nirenberg" (@matthewnirenberg) on "RECESSIM"
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As someone who's looked into what it takes to become a "defence developer" / "legal licenced firearm dealer" I can confirm that the rules vary dramatically from country to country. In Europe they take the attitude of "clean record, correct qualifications (usually mech eng or elec eng), experience, intent and ability to afford the licences" unlike places like Australia, New Zealand or Canada where they try to limit it to "those already licenced - i.e. no new people" and "we'd rather just leave it to the big names - screw anything new". This makes Australia, New Zealand and Canada horrible places to do anything even slightly considered "defence related" as you're basically never going to get licenced.
"Defence Related" means anything that has a military use or capability requires the correct licences to design, produce or sell (some exceptions apply for use by citizens or if the equipment is "dual purpose" and officially permitted as long as it remains within the country), this includes but isn't limited to:
* encryption
* radios / comms equipment
* signal analysers
* oscilloscopes
* maps / mapping software (excluding Google Maps, etc.)
* codes and ciphers
* equipment cases
* anything drone related - note that it could be a ground, water or air based drone
* recovery equipment (for data or for retrieving physical objects
* new manufacturing methods
* compression software
* biometric equipment, software and methods
* Anything AI
* Surveillance equipment (other than a basic security camera)
* Weapons and Firearms
* Body Armour
* Camping equipment
* etc.
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@user-bubstech Unfortunately that's the problem. The environmentalists whinged to AU, NZ, CAN, UK and EU demanding that someone be responsible.
The result is environmental regulations that make the manufacturer responsible for compliance breaches, because they're the ones with money to afford huge penalties and because companies in these places can't just vanish and come back under a different name as if nothing happened, they were the easy target.
There's this govt mandated concept of "you made it, you're responsible for what it does to the planet" and whilst well intentioned, very easily backfires and causes many unforeseen consequences such as "a company must ensure spare parts be available until the product no longer exists" (the unintended consequence is how can a product be discontinued and then the company shut down or not keep making spare parts).
This is why companies are getting people to "trade-in" the older products so they can quit making spare parts. Similar to the EU wealth register, there's a product register where companies have to provide the serial numbers of products sold and only a small 3% (broken and thrown out by consumer) allowance exists. For every device the company doesn't get back beyond that, they either have to keep producing parts for or keep enough in inventory for repairs (but aren't required to repair), or, they have the recently added option of paying a penalty per unaccounted for unit to be permitted to de-register the unit and cease stocking spare parts.
There's a reason why the rest of the world calls the USA the "wild west of today" as the USA is one of the last least regulated places for business.
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Here's the problem with right to repair - it actively enables the theft of IP and the illegal cloning of products that took a heap of R&D and a heap of money to create.
Just a schematic can reduce the time to create a cheap clone by 90% as the software side of things is very easy. As an independent hardware and software developer, how am I supposed to recover even my R&D costs and make some profit if I have to release the key information? Its literally not possible.
If I release the schematics and/or source code then I've just thrown away what is usually years worth of R&D worth a lot of money as it will 100% be cloned and sold at the cost of manufacture. Once source code is released there goes work that can't be further developed. I've written software that works faster, that's smaller and more secure than its competitors - if the source was released those competitors would have all their work done for them and my work would be for nothing.
What the solution could be is if schematics were released once a product and its close evolutions are all fully discontinued and patents expired. The other issue is that even if this occurred, the source wouldn't be released as source is significantly commonly reused, adapted and optimised and thus would still be in use in other products. Without the source, most modern hardware is useless as 95% of the "magic" happens in the source, not in hardware.
I've been on both side of the issue and I feel that those who demand "right to repair" fail to understand what its like to be on the other side - it reminds me of the extreme end of the opensource community who believe that everything should be open and free and that people will magically "donate" to the developers even though in reality this rarely happens and never covers the R&D costs plus some profit. If things are free, no one ever pays because why would they - it'd be stupid to do so.
At the end of the day, costs need to be recovered, profits need to be made as a result of having done the hard work creating, and, food needs to be kept on the table. Giving everything away doesn't do any of this yet life and stuff all costs money.
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@jb2590 Actually it is both as it depends on the product in question. Some products are hardware only such as mechanical calculators, sometimes its both such as the Bendix MG-1 which output a serial result at the end, and sometimes its the product is software. So no those two statements aren't mutually exclusive.
Not providing a schematic isn't anti-repair, its anti-cheap clone. Sure you could try to probe out a board or manually disassemble and map out a mechanism but the reality is that all still takes time. What doesn't take time is reproducing a schematic in software and generating the product for immediate manufacture. This is the reality of modern times. Why should a competitor be permitted to clone a product simply because some random person demands it to be? Is that random person going to fund the on-going development and refuse to buy the cheap clone? Of course not. Forcing schematics to be released is ensuring that cheap clones will be available from day two unlike currently where they don't appear for a month or two (this is the sale window for the genuine product in most cases).
If you choose to throw away a product because you personally can't repair it, that's your right. The reality is that unless you live in the USA, you're going to have to take it to be recycled and if it isn't either very old or badly damaged you'll be paying huge environmental fines for not contacting the company to repair the product.
Schematics are a secret for good reason. Lets take the definition used by "right to repair" outside the USA. They deem it to be all manufacturing information, engineering drawings and all relevant source code, the latter to enable different parts to be installed should a chip (be it RAM or an FPGA) be discontinued and be replaced. This then extends to the entire source code for the software side (if the hardware has drivers and/or software) as changing compenents can require significant changes in order to ensure functionality and should an operating system be outdated, the "right to repair" movement demand that the source code of all software that ran on that OS be public to "port" it to newer OS's - this demand already ignores whether or not the product is available on newer OS's because these people don't want to pay an upgrade licence fee.
Just like that you've made it worthless for companies to spend money on R&D be it for hardware or software so that means that development of new products will cease and the market will stagnate - this is already being seen as "right to repair" is being considered.
You can currently repair products (that aren't Apple) but you have to do the hard work of probing and researching what the components are by their numbers. You don't need a schematic. Do I think Apple locking damn near every chip down to prevent repair is horrible - yes, but they're the only company doing that, quit buying their rubbish and buy literally any other companies product and you won't have that issue.
Just because some people throw a fit and demand the world from companies, doesn't mean those companies have to comply - many would rather either move to other markets or shut down that give their IP away. If "right to repair" is to ever be taken seriously, it needs to address the following and provide actual solutions:
* How to ensure ALL IP is protected
* How to ensure that clones can't be made (from a companies schematics) until at least a year after a product launch
* How to ensure that the small fortune that is R&D can be recovered along with a profit so development can continue
* How to ensure that competitors can't have their hard work done for them by simply stealing source that the "right to repair" forces to be revealed
Until these things are worked out and solved, "right to repair" has no right beyond being able to swap components without a schematic which can currently be done to any product that isn't made by Apple.
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