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| Zero999:
--- Quote from: ataradov on July 23, 2023, 09:17:30 pm --- --- Quote from: blauerscharik on July 23, 2023, 08:48:31 pm ---If a company stops producing a certain product why not make it open-source? --- End quote --- Companies license a lot of stuff from third parties. It is very hard to make the whole thing open. an opening just the stuff you own will not create a working firmware. --- Quote from: blauerscharik on July 23, 2023, 08:48:31 pm ---It's the mentality of "If I can't have it or use it, then you can't have it or use it" --- End quote --- It is not. I've been involved on one major effort to open source previously closed source code. It took us months. Apart from clearing all the license stuff, we had to make sure that the code builds outside of our corporate build environment. It was not easy. In our case open sourcing was the goal, so months of effort were justified. But if company gets nothing in return, it is hard to justify. --- End quote --- Being open source doesn't stop them making hardware repairable. Firmware can be provided in binary/hex format to prevent the user from seeing the source code. --- Quote from: vad on July 24, 2023, 03:49:03 am ---The good old days when both the schematic and the operating system’s source code of Apple computer were published in the user manual are long gone. --- End quote --- That doesn't necessarily make it open source. The code could easily be licenced to the customer on the bases they don't copy it, or give it to anyone else. The other points made regarding, cost, usefulness and docmentation are valid, but open vs closed souce is irrelevant. |
| vad:
--- Quote from: Zero999 on July 24, 2023, 10:08:21 am --- --- Quote from: vad on July 24, 2023, 03:49:03 am ---The good old days when both the schematic and the operating system’s source code of Apple computer were published in the user manual are long gone. --- End quote --- That doesn't necessarily make it open source. The code could easily be licenced to the customer on the bases they don't copy it, or give it to anyone else. --- End quote --- It definitely does not. The Apple 1 manual contains a legal copyright notice. My point is that 47 years ago, it was practical to print the source code of the entire operating system in a paperback book. |
| blauerscharik:
--- Quote from: mendip_discovery on July 24, 2023, 09:35:27 am ---It all changed because of money, mostly the desire to spend less and make more. Obsolete parts/machines so they can sell you new ones. Good manuals with descriptions cost money to make. If you want support then you can pay for it. Otherwise, use the community to help you. --- End quote --- That's what I think too. It's a shame that everybody just plays along with this nonsense, being it engineers or consumer who just want cheap stuff |
| hans:
I still think there is some point in having schematics of e.g. laptops or TV sets available. If you watch Lious Rossman Macbook repair videos, I'd risk a guess 2/3s+ of the fixes being a problem with power supplies or connectors. Some just went bad, others had liquid damage but could still be fixed. There are also other YT repair channels that show a similar story. SSD stop worked => PSU went bad. Fixed PSU, got data off the SSD, was a much cheaper fix than a clinical extraction of FLASH chips and then piecing together the data array (if at all possible if a controller secures the data in a board-unique way). Even simpler fixes like batteries going bad over time would easily extend the lifetime of a device. But no, they need to glued in, which saves them maybe a couple tens of cents, but it makes the device unnecessarily dangerous to work on once you need to slide poky things under the battery to undo the glue. But I honestly think these manuals are not available, because manufacturers will pull the copyright-card while instead they want customers to just buy a new device. A manufacturer has zero stake in making a battery user replaceable. The manufacturers can make zero profit on after-market battery sales, as clones will arrive In a few weeks that are compatible. It costs them money to add extra screws in production, and then you have the self-imposed "phones need to be thinner" and "phones need IP67 100m dive rating" which plays perfectly into the hands of offering less functionality for higher sale price. |
| blauerscharik:
--- Quote from: tooki on July 24, 2023, 09:18:08 am ---Another factor might be the time and effort to create documentation. The loss of service manuals has occurred simultaneous to the loss of good user manuals. Back in 2009, I was hired by a small software company to do the English translation of their product. That involved several thousand text strings in the program (i.e. any text the program itself displayed, like the names of menu items, checkboxes, and other widgets, as well as error messages and the like), over a thousand context-sensitive help files. Then there was the 300-page manual, hundreds of FAQs, etc. Writing a manual like that is a ton of work, even just in one language. Really good manuals actually fill two roles: how-to guides for less-experienced users, and reference guides for experienced ones. That’s a big challenge in itself. Companies have been less and less willing to do that, instead putting out short “quick start guides” and then writing shitty FAQs to add information that should have been in the manual to begin with, and leaving the rest up to community self-help by offering user forums. I think it’s shameful. All of that is just for user documentation, which is something that a good technical writer can write mostly on their own. Public service documentation requires much more direct involvement of the engineering staff who actually designed the product. This makes that documentation even more expensive. And to boot, it often requires review by the legal department to ensure that no trade secrets are being divulged. In the end, most service documentation nowadays is produced for internal use only, often written by the engineers themselves. This avoids the need to have it reviewed by legal and rewritten/edited by the technical communication department. --- End quote --- Like another user said. Companies try to make more money with spending less, a real shame. |
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