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A “right to repair” movement tools up

economist.com

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Re: A “right to repair” movement tools up

#181

Post by kartickv »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #161
kartickv wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're more dependent on corporations when we buy things, since we have given them all the money upfront. A service model gives us more leverage. As someone who had to throw away a washing machine because the company wouldn't service it, I would have very much preferred a rental model where the loss would have been theirs. To flip your question: Are you okay not being able to buy a washing machine because you couldn't…

> We're more dependent on corporations when we buy things, since we have given them all the money upfront. A service model gives us more leverage. No, we aren't and no, it doesn't. Buying things up-front means your interaction with a corporation is brief and to the point. With service model, they get to gouge you for money and restrict the things you can do with the item you now don't own, but rent. > Are you okay no…

That's wrong. A service model gives me leverage — I stop paying the rent whenever I want and return the washing machine. Maybe you have a different service model in mind, like a contract, in which case we'd naturally disagree, but I'm not talking about such a model.

Neither do I care about my flexibility to modify my washing machine. All I care is that it washes my clothes well.

BTW, what's "SOL"?

Re: A “right to repair” movement tools up

#182

Post by cnorthwood »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #168
oneplane wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In our country we have a law that states a product has to live up to it's reasonably expected life time. So while a manufacturer might give it a warranty and the retailer might give it some special warranty, ultimately, the retailer (which in some cases is the manufacturer if you buy directly) is responsible no matter what. That doesn't go for consumables or software, or if you break it yourself obviously, but a phon…

What country? This sounds like a great way to poison a court system with bullshit lawsuits.

The UK has this law, and I believe it's standardised across the EU.

Re: A “right to repair” movement tools up

#183

Post by yann63 »

kartickv wrote: post #155

Won't the issue take care of itself if: 1) Companies are taxed for the all the environmental pollution they case and 2) The minimum warranty period is 5 years. If the device fails before that, the company should lend you a replacement for the remainder of the warranty period, or refund a prorated amount.

> The minimum warranty period is 5 years

Why 5 years? Why not 4 or 6? Actually, I think the warranty period should increase, always. For example by one month every year. So a product sold in 2017 has a warranty of 2 years (24 months). A product sold in 2018 would have a warranty of 25 months. A product sold in 2019 would have a warranty of 26 months. And so on... This would encourage (force!) companies R&D to always improve products, but at a sustainable speed.

Of course the figures given above should be tweaked better, maybe start at 3 or 4 years warranty very soon, increase by 1, 2 or 3 months per year, I don't know.

Re: A “right to repair” movement tools up

#184

Post by benevol »

stefco_ wrote: post #6

I hope at some point we'll start including recycling/disassembly and replacement externalities into price somehow. I don't know how you would do that in a fair way, but it is frustrating that there aren't a ton of corrective market forces to encourage manufacturers to make highly reusable, repairable, recyclable devices. All of this electronics churn is environmentally terrible, and it's frustrating that, as with car…

The main issue is this: We need to reduce consumption overall!

It is well known that Americans consume far more natural resources and live much less sustainably than people from any other large country of the world. “A child born in the United States will create thirteen times as much ecological damage over the course of his or her lifetime than a child born in Brazil,” reports the Sierra Club’s Dave Tilford, adding that the average American will drain as many resources as 35 natives of India and consume 53 times more goods and services than someone from China.

Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/american-consumpt...

Re: A “right to repair” movement tools up

#185

Post by amiga-workbench »

userbinator wrote: post #128
jokoon wrote: post #18

Planned obsolescence is why I will never invest more than 100 euros into a phone. I will always wait to buy low-priced, fast enough for me hardware. I still remember how my macbook pro started to be slow and unusable after OSX updates. My real wish is that one day, computer or smartphone hardware might last at least 5 or even 10 years. I know software is evolving quickly, but there comes a point where I don't think y…

My laptop (Thinkpad X60) is over 10 years old and still works well for what I use it for. There's even an FSF-approved free BIOS for it. My desktop is approaching 8 years, and I haven't found it limiting either, only buying more storage for it over time. I also have a backup server that's nearly 20 years old. All it does is serve disks so it doesn't need to be very fast either. It really depends on what you do and ho…

Once you ditch largely inefficient commercial software, your hardware requirements drop significantly.

So many applications written under the pressures of business are just such crap.

Re: A “right to repair” movement tools up

#186

Post by booblik »

benevol wrote: post #184
stefco_ wrote: post #6

I hope at some point we'll start including recycling/disassembly and replacement externalities into price somehow. I don't know how you would do that in a fair way, but it is frustrating that there aren't a ton of corrective market forces to encourage manufacturers to make highly reusable, repairable, recyclable devices. All of this electronics churn is environmentally terrible, and it's frustrating that, as with car…

The main issue is this: We need to reduce consumption overall! It is well known that Americans consume far more natural resources and live much less sustainably than people from any other large country of the world. “A child born in the United States will create thirteen times as much ecological damage over the course of his or her lifetime than a child born in Brazil,” reports the Sierra Club’s Dave Tilford, adding…

This is a very bad extrapolation that doesn’t acount for the constant increase in consumption in those countries, whereas the US consumption leveled.

Re: A “right to repair” movement tools up

#187

Post by b5 »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #116
SeanDav wrote: post #7

A long time ago I read a Science Fiction short story about a society where everything was unrepairable, throwaway and came with expiry dates. Does not seem too much like Science Fiction nowadays... EDIT: I wonder if anyone might remember the name of the story: The basic plot is a business man living in a throwaway society manages to convince a dying man to sell him his personally developed car. A car that has been bu…

That seems like somewhat of a weak ending, because there's no reason digital clocks and plastic gear levers can't also last for decades. Also I'll link a sort of inverse to that tale: http://www.eldritchpress.org/owh/shay.html#line01

I've read the story, but frustratingly can't remember its title or who wrote it.

The ending works well because everything in the car is handmade and overengineered, and the "improvements" are all cost-saving measures. In doing so, he ends up making the car nothing like the original and nearly the same as the cars the maker was reacting to.

Re: A “right to repair” movement tools up

#188

Post by Digit-Al »

occultist_throw wrote: post #133
GuiA wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All of this electronics churn is environmentally terrible, and it's frustrating that, as with carbon energy products, the entire world is forced to pay for the environmental externalities rather than the actual tech users. Well, let’s see what a leading company is saying about that: ”We believe our goal should be a closed-loop supply chain, where products are built using only renewable resources or recycled materia…

It's not just cypherpunks and hardware hackers. We in the occult communities also very much believe in the same ideals. In fact, this saying is what this discussion reminded me of: Nidhogg's Rule: Recycling. There is no such place as Away, so be careful what you throw there. Recycle, give away, don't waste, find a place for it somewhere else. This includes people as well as things. http://www.northernpaganism.org/rok…

Can't you just chuck all your rubbish into Satan's bottomless pit of despair? ;-)

Re: A “right to repair” movement tools up

#189

Post by benevol »

booblik wrote: post #186
benevol wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main issue is this: We need to reduce consumption overall! It is well known that Americans consume far more natural resources and live much less sustainably than people from any other large country of the world. “A child born in the United States will create thirteen times as much ecological damage over the course of his or her lifetime than a child born in Brazil,” reports the Sierra Club’s Dave Tilford, adding…

This is a very bad extrapolation that doesn’t acount for the constant increase in consumption in those countries, whereas the US consumption leveled.

I actually don't even want to compare numbers or countries directly. I just want to remind that consumption in Western countries exceeds available resources by far. We're bankrupting the planet, it's the wrong path and it simply can't last.

Re: A “right to repair” movement tools up

#190

Post by icebraining »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #134
noam87 wrote: post #99

I've been thinking recently that there is exists a completely unxplored market in tech. Local shops based around FOSS / open hardware where designers, hardware and software people work together to build custom projects for their clients. I would call this person a "technology artisan", because the closest analogue I can think of is a tailor or a carpinter. So, for example, a family would go to their local technology…

Your instincts are correct, you're describing the future. But there's a problem preventing it from working today. Your idea only really works if you can get a large number of these artisans on board, across many disciplines, and keep their "dance card" stocked. The issue is that solving any problem in software costs about $1000. And typically if you want to solve one problem you need to solve 2-20 others first. Your…

There are plenty of small companies doing exactly those kinds of projects for SMBs; I worked for one for five years (it's still doing fine, I just moved on).

Rather than a bond, which would be unwieldy to implement, we'd take a risk: we develop it for the first few customers for a percentage of the cost, but keeping all rights to the code so we can then reuse it. Some projects pay their bills and some more, others not so much.

As for the n-sided market, we used the typical solution: having employees.

In our case, we used an open source platform (Odoo) which comes with the generic business modules - CRM, Accounting, Invoicing, ERP, etc - and which allowed us to build integrated functionality for the specific industry. We had clients of all sorts, from one-man dental offices to international clothing manufacturers.

(Disclaimer: I still work with Odoo, but I was never an Odoo SA employee)

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