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Ask HN: Any legal way against forced software upgrades and feature removal

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31–40 of 81 posts

Re: Ask HN: Any legal way against forced software upgrades and feature removal

#31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling it "more convenience and polish" is a bit of an understatement. My experience with open-source software is that if it breaks or it's missing a feature and you want your needs to be addressed then you will have to hack on it yourself. While this is great for people who enjoy hacking it's not great once you get bored of it. I always enjoyed macOS (at least pre-Catalina) because it's Unix but without the require…

I've needed 0 Seconds of hacking since using Fedora for 2 years. Linux has evolved in the last 14 Years

Oh yeah? I tried Silverblue a couple years ago, and the Nvidia driver stopped working after a motherboard swap. I tried Kinoite but KDE Plasma's subpixel antialiasing looks terrible on HiDPI displays. Maybe that's some of the "convenience and polish" that you just have to sacrifice in order to use FOSS, but I could also just use software that's properly polished and not care whether it is FOSS or not.

And no, I'm not rebuilding my computer for linux, you would not be the first person to point out that I should replace my Nvidia GPU with an AMD one.

I will note though that GNOME is one of the nicest DEs I've ever used, at least back when graphics acceleration worked. Trackpads finally seem to be a first-class citizen, something Apple has already been doing for almost two decades (and, in fact, it's an Apple trackpad that works quite well with it).

Re: Ask HN: Any legal way against forced software upgrades and feature removal

#33
post #4

The way to fight this has been out there since before most of these companies and products have existed – use FOSS. If you want more convenience and polish then just remember that you are trading it for privacy and autonomy. There is no middle option.

Calling it "more convenience and polish" is a bit of an understatement. My experience with open-source software is that if it breaks or it's missing a feature and you want your needs to be addressed then you will have to hack on it yourself. While this is great for people who enjoy hacking it's not great once you get bored of it. I always enjoyed macOS (at least pre-Catalina) because it's Unix but without the require…

With proprietary software, how many times a producer did fix breakage or add missing feature for you because you bought a licence (subscription)? How fast was it?

Re: Ask HN: Any legal way against forced software upgrades and feature removal

#34
post #32

Sony did lose its appeal during the PS3 OtherOS lawsuit (it ultimately settled) ... but for the macOS case can you not just reinstall? There may be a difference between inconvenience and impossibility.

You also need to show actual harm in a lawsuit. Inconvenience is not harm. "You increased my version number!" is not harm. "Your update put me out of business for a week" is harm.

Re: Ask HN: Any legal way against forced software upgrades and feature removal

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've needed 0 Seconds of hacking since using Fedora for 2 years. Linux has evolved in the last 14 Years

Oh yeah? I tried Silverblue a couple years ago, and the Nvidia driver stopped working after a motherboard swap. I tried Kinoite but KDE Plasma's subpixel antialiasing looks terrible on HiDPI displays. Maybe that's some of the "convenience and polish" that you just have to sacrifice in order to use FOSS, but I could also just use software that's properly polished and not care whether it is FOSS or not. And no, I'm not…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Any legal way against forced software upgrades and feature removal

#36
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s please not turn this into a flamewar. There are dozens of reasons to not use Android, like there are dozens of reasons to use it. It’s a personal choice. When someone asks “how can I avoid this one thing”, the answer isn’t “switch to this alternative which has seventeen different problems you’ll dislike more”. The OP is asking a question on Hacker News. Surely they have heard of Android. They might even use it,…

Given that the OP is asking about a problem caused by not having enough control over the software they're running, it's entirely valid to respond by suggesting software that gives the user more control.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Any legal way against forced software upgrades and feature removal

#37
tl;dr: the world is messy, automations and remote control by vendors has shown to be the only working method vs. individual responsibility/organisational responsibility, and the law isn't against that (at least not in the EU so far).

Longer wall of opinion:

There isn't, mainly because that would cut both ways: you'd get the same constructions as budget airlines where the core product would seem to be what you want, but everything becomes a paid add-on.

Right now it's an embedded cost or hidden cost, and there is no service fee. For companies like Apple that can work because the products as sold as a single SKU while that hasn't worked for others (and they tried!) like Windows + Hardware, Android + Hardware etc. It never worked out because the ongoing cost and service requirements aren't something the consumer is willing to pay for separately and the vendor can't eat that cost because they don't sell it as a single product with a single business case.

Technically we could go to a model where this actually gets done:

  - Hardware and Software is separate
  - Support and Services are separate
  - Features are paid for separately

The problem with this is the same as it was 50 years ago: all users will now need to know a lot of things in-depth for realistic use of such compositions. And people just do not care, and do not want to spend time, energy or other forms of effort/resources on such things.

There is a small subset of a niche of a fraction of the market that does want (some of) it, but it nearly never covers the cost to the extent where you get everything you want (i.e. Framework; Fairphone, you get modules and software you can almost self-compile, but the NDAs around MRC, ME, PHYs and GPUs makes it impossible to really do all feature and functionality control yourself).

The same applies to computers and software if you treat them as a black box but are interconnecting them, you now get dependencies, network effects and "your problem is everyones problem". This means that if not enough participants play by the same rules to a high enough degree, the system doesn't work at all and everyone feels that pain. Even things like MTA-TLS, basic PKI, or even basic hygiene like not operating an open relay or open proxy is a bar 'professionals' are unable to consistently pass... We need protections from ourselves and each other (in terms of hosts) and the last few decades have shown that individual responsibility and corporate policy are not working out.

Ideally, if someone really wants this, they would be doing this by not accepting an EULA that has automations they don't want, and go back to first principles where they do have that control, but without attestation they would not be allowed to participate in shared systems (like the internet).

To make further discussion easier, we could make a simple base case like "the OS used to support exFAT but after this automated patch it no longer does". Perhaps the license expired, perhaps it was vulnerable to a zero touch exploit and the cost was too high to fix it and the impact on the brand was too high to leave it in. Not sure what other reasonings we could come up with, but there are similar things related to RSR, MRT and the likes were existing functionality might be impacted in some way shape or form.

Re: Ask HN: Any legal way against forced software upgrades and feature removal

#38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling it "more convenience and polish" is a bit of an understatement. My experience with open-source software is that if it breaks or it's missing a feature and you want your needs to be addressed then you will have to hack on it yourself. While this is great for people who enjoy hacking it's not great once you get bored of it. I always enjoyed macOS (at least pre-Catalina) because it's Unix but without the require…

I've needed 0 Seconds of hacking since using Fedora for 2 years. Linux has evolved in the last 14 Years

I can easily trust my older relatives to do fine on macOS, Linux would be either painful or more realistically a no go.

Re: Ask HN: Any legal way against forced software upgrades and feature removal

#39
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s please not turn this into a flamewar. There are dozens of reasons to not use Android, like there are dozens of reasons to use it. It’s a personal choice. When someone asks “how can I avoid this one thing”, the answer isn’t “switch to this alternative which has seventeen different problems you’ll dislike more”. The OP is asking a question on Hacker News. Surely they have heard of Android. They might even use it,…

Given that the OP is asking about a problem caused by not having enough control over the software they're running, it's entirely valid to respond by suggesting software that gives the user more control.

But realistically for the end user, an Android device only gives the impression of control, does not mean it will never update and keep working.

Re: Ask HN: Any legal way against forced software upgrades and feature removal

#40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling it "more convenience and polish" is a bit of an understatement. My experience with open-source software is that if it breaks or it's missing a feature and you want your needs to be addressed then you will have to hack on it yourself. While this is great for people who enjoy hacking it's not great once you get bored of it. I always enjoyed macOS (at least pre-Catalina) because it's Unix but without the require…

With proprietary software, how many times a producer did fix breakage or add missing feature for you because you bought a licence (subscription)? How fast was it?

Nobody's done anything for me specifically, but if it's something multiple people need in their workflows, I've seen plenty of examples of things being added due to community demand. It's not fast, but nobody gave me a "do it yourself and open a pull request" attitude, which is one of my greatest gripes with open-source software.
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