New EU-wide product repair rules come into force

ShadowOfThePit an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> According to the European Commission, the new rules are expected to bring €4.8 billion in growth and investment within the EU.

The source of this number seems to come from here, on page 73:

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELE...

Interestingly, the number is over a span of 15 years, and is only the calculated "Growth and investment".

Other numbers are "Savings in production costs" at €15.6 billion, and "Consumer savings" at 25€ per consumer per year for an impressive total of €176.5 billion.

It also lists "Business adjustment costs" at €8.1 billion, "Business administrative costs" at just €69.8 million and "Implementation and enforcement" at €105.5 million.

I wonder why "Growth and investment" was chosed as the number to use. Maybe to keep emphasising their gist of "the EU is the future for sustainable growth"?

Also, here are the announcements by the Commission:

https://commission.europa.eu/news-and-media/news/right-repai...

https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/right-to-repair-...

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jeremiahlee 8 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Great, now require it for software.

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troupo an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

> including a repair obligation for manufacturers of certain products

Unfortunately regulations often don't go far enough.

I have a ~10 year old iPad Pro in perfect working condition. I can basically do nothing with it, and increasingly it can no longer even browse the internet because Safari is so outdated on it.

So it will be waste.

See similar story about Amazon bricking old Kindles: https://www.techradar.com/tablets/ereaders/amazon-bricking-c...

But, this regulation is still a tiny step in the right direction.

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Hendrikto 7 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

I recently had to throw out a first gen iPad that was physically still in mint condition (even including the battery, somehow), simply for the lack of support essentially turning it into a useless brick.

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vv_ an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Updating old products is expensive, especially as their hardware falls further behind. Unless manufacturers adopt some kind of subscription model to justify the cost of continued updates, which would likely be very unpopular, I don’t see how they can realistically keep older devices supported indefinitely.

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NL807 14 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

>I don’t see how they can realistically keep older devices supported indefinitely.

They don't have to. Open up the platform for linux and custom OS.

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Hendrikto 6 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Vendors do not have to support their product indefinitely. They have to design their products in a way that they do not become useless after support ends. E.g. by opening up the bootloader and letting users install custom software.

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seemaze 33 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

unlock old hardware and let the community support

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vv_ 21 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

It is not always possible to provide the required support. First, it is expensive, as someone needs to prepare all the materials and resources the community would need to continue supporting the product after official support ends. Second, there are legal restrictions, for example, you may not be allowed to provide access to the radio firmware. Finally, most companies simply do not want to make their intellectual property publicly available.

You could make the argument that manufacturers only need to provide the means for the community to support the device, rather than extensive documentation. However, these communities are often so small that this would never be a priority for most companies. Combined with the IP-related issues, I don't think this is really feasible.

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realusername 16 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

> Finally, most companies simply do not want to make their intellectual property publicly available.

You can just stop to the last reason, they don't want to give up ownership back to you.

They would prefer you to throw the device in the bin and buy a new one, preferably from them again.

	▲	vv_ 5 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> they don't want to give up ownership back to you No, it's simply that your demand is completely unreasonable. You are essentially asking them to adopt an open-source model. That can mean giving up control over its intellectual property and potentially exposing proprietary technology to competitors, especially when some products are valuable precisely because of the software that runs on them.

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troupo 12 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

You've just made an argument for a bunch of regulation to force opening up and removing obstacles.

E.g.: "for example, you may not be allowed to provide access to the radio firmware." Given that everything has a radio these days (everything is wifi- and/or bluetooth- enabled), this is just stupid. Why is firmware for basically essential infra not legally available?

Same goes for many, many, many other things.

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6510 26 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Government could hold the keys. Sufficient weird behavior should also trigger release.

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fhackenberger 19 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Well I'm quite sure the advances in LLMs abilities are going to be quite a nice change in this regard. If vendors would be required to release all firmware source code or at least full specs after devices drop out of support, it would be fairly simple and cheap now to port drivers to new kernel release or different OSs.

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troupo 32 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

They don't have to support it indefinitely.

Allowing users install what they want on it would be the best case scenario.

Instead we have bullshit like "your TV is three years old? No updates for you": https://developer.samsung.com/smarttv/develop/specifications...

	▲	vv_ 11 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Your link doesn't say that the device isn't getting any updates. It only says that, if I understood it correctly, pre-2023 devices don't receive OS updates. They still get guaranteed security updates for five years. > They don't have to support it indefinitely. How long should support for devices last in that case? And what should be supported?