this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2023
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Its incredibly wasteful, but there is another perspective.
When that microscope was purchased, it formed part of someone's budget throughout its service life. Support would have been guaranteed for that service life, but that life has now expired.
The company isn't obligated to assist buyers beyond that service life, and doing so would eat into current and future profits.
There is not a single commenter (nor downvoter) in this thread who would open the source for that microscope if they owned that microscope company.
This is why right to repair matters. I will NEVER ask a company to repair something I purchased if I can do it myself. Oh wait, they're doing everything in their power to prevent me from being independent after the purchase...
Practically every single manufacturer that makes things more complex than spoons wants to keep fucking me in the ass and for me to keep paying money for thing I already bought and "own".
At least when the spoon breaks... Except I never witnessed it happen in my life, I'm still eating with same stainless steel spoons that I grew up with.
And no, I could easily open source that microscope, because I'm not afraid that some lackey that can't even design his own microscope will have better equipment than I do if I'm the owner of a factory that specializes in producing microscopes. Microscopes don't spawn from thin air just because you have blueprints, you need to build them, and manufacturer of microscopes should take pride in quality of production, not some arbitrary "intellectual property" that I can steal 98% of by simply cutting the finished product in half with my table saw.
They're not, actually. This may be subtle nuance but they're not actively preventing you from doing whatever you want, they're just not assisting you to undermine their IP.
As I said, this business model is built around products having a finite service life. This microscope may have been state of the art 30 years ago, but all the R & D that's taken place in the interim is funded by the sale of new microscopes.
Haha yes, apple totally doesn't put DRM in their computer parts...