General > General Technical Chat

Right to repair, my problem with it

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wraper:

--- Quote from: robint91 on July 19, 2021, 06:29:11 am ---There is nothing illegal on what Apple and Intersil or other manufacturers are doing. You can have still access to other battery charging chips. They are not limiting access to that technology, they are not pushing other battery charging chips off the market. It is just that Intersil doesn't have the right to sell that customized part to other clients. Making this kind of deal illegal, is opening a can of worms for other small businesses and design houses.

--- End quote ---
You are spreading FUD. Show any right to repair law proposal that says Intersil must sell a custom Apple chip to 3rd parties? They say that Apple must sell it to 3rd parties.

Psi:
I'm 100% for right to repair,
But I agree there are some issues to be ironed out with regard to right to repair and how it interacts with other laws.

I suspect the EMC cert issue will be solved by exception. Where devices repaired in good faith do not need to be re-certified or held to the same standard as they were when manufactured.
It is true that this *may* cause a small percentage of repaired products to be outside the legal limits, but i think the best approach is to do nothing and wait and see if this is actually a problem before applying any laws. I'm a firm believer that laws should be applied when a real problem exist not when people suspect a problem may occur.

For the issue of obtaining custom ICs/parts I think it helps to think about why these parts are contractually blocked from sale to the public.
It's not because the company spent millions on development and wants to recover costs. because the chip could be sold publicly at a higher price to bring in essentially free money.
You can argue the main reason for keeping the chip internal-only is to get a financial or market advantage by preventing their competitors from using the chip.  But this advantage could be negated by a high public chip cost. And if that's not enough, public supply of the chips could be sold in non-SMT formats to prevent SMT placement. Repair shops just want the chip and don't care if they get a bag full of loose chips.
(well, maybe they would prefer the IC legs arrived un-bent, but you get my point)

Another issue is the price of parts. A right to repair law does little good if it requires manufacturers make parts available but the manufacturer chooses to price them insanely high to prevent anyone using them. So some legislation maybe required here.
I think a fair max price could be set by scaling up the part price in BOM to reflect its percentage of the retail price plus some extra amount to account for shipping/handling/warehouse stocking etc..


I think any Right to Repair law should leave the method of making parts available for purchase up to each device manufacturer to decide since different methods work better for different items.
It does not matter for repair how the parts are supplied, all that matters is that the parts are available for purchase at a fair price and without any form of manufacturer imposed registration or legal roadblocks.

- The manufacturer could supply parts themselves to part-wholesaler companies for redistribution, this option is good for chips that need programming where the manufacturer may not want to release the binary. They can simply sell the chips pre-programmed.

- The manufacturer could allow digikey/mouser etc to sell the custom chip, perhaps with restrictions, higher price different packaging format, order qty limit etc..

rsjsouza:

--- Quote from: robint91 on July 19, 2021, 06:29:11 am ---
--- Quote from: pqass on July 19, 2021, 06:07:38 am ---Wrapping a trade secret in a contract doesn't make it legal. If its deemed anti-competitive, it's void and both parties will have legal trouble.

R2R is partly about access to the same components that sellers put in their products. It's not about reverse engineering anything. The scheme is to make every component appear to be one-of-kind so the only option offered to an end-user is to replace whole boards at 85% the product cost.  And they use contracts to bind suppliers from selling re-labelled chips that are supplier-designed minor customizations.

--- End quote ---

There is nothing illegal on what Apple and Intersil or other manufacturers are doing. You can have still access to other battery charging chips. They are not limiting access to that technology, they are not pushing other battery charging chips off the market. It is just that Intersil doesn't have the right to sell that customized part to other clients. Making this kind of deal illegal, is opening a can of worms for other small businesses and design houses.

--- End quote ---
Except that they are artificially making those other battery charging chips completely incompatible with the original equipment - just look at the inkjet printing market: the manufacturers work day and night to choke the third party business. This has become abusive with the extreme integration of very powerful microcontrollers in very tiny packages.

Psi:
Yeah, there are some serious question to be asked as to why Apple made that charging chip custom in the first place. It would not surprise me if the only reason was to block repair. They have done lots of stuff to block repair in other ways so a custom chip I would not put past them.
I've seen people mentioning that the chip in question is identical to an available version except for using a different i2c address. No idea if it's true.

m98:
Somehow, all of those anti-right-to-repair shills remind me of one small business owner in the US I once called to get a relatively old device's firmware because I had to replace the micro. He told me: "Fuck off, this is MY PROPERTY, I keep ALL THE CODE in a USB-Drive tucked in my underpants!!!".

Uhm, cultural differences, I guess. :-//

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