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John Deere tractors are coming with a kill-switch

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bd139:
What we need is open source wheel chairs. You get a kit of parts and have to load the firmware from GitHub written by some dude in a hut in the Philippines between his day job of beating peasants.

EFF have one job which is to be extremists on the other side of the fence.

The happy point is always somewhere between two extremes.

Incidentally there is legislation about firmware on medical devices which wheelchairs are classified under. That may be the deciding factor here.

SiliconWizard:
The general problem with medical devices is that they are heavily regulated (for, mostly, a good reason), which makes open-source a very tricky approach.
Of course a company, as long as it fits its policies, could open-source a given medical device product, but no one would be able to modify it without going through the whole regulatory approval process, so in practice, this is a lost cause.

NiHaoMike:

--- Quote from: bd139 on June 08, 2022, 10:23:39 am ---What we need is open source wheel chairs. You get a kit of parts and have to load the firmware from GitHub written by some dude in a hut in the Philippines between his day job of beating peasants.

--- End quote ---
Someone already did a proof of concept.


--- Quote from: SiliconWizard on June 08, 2022, 07:36:28 pm ---The general problem with medical devices is that they are heavily regulated (for, mostly, a good reason), which makes open-source a very tricky approach.
Of course a company, as long as it fits its policies, could open-source a given medical device product, but no one would be able to modify it without going through the whole regulatory approval process, so in practice, this is a lost cause.

--- End quote ---
A workaround is to make the "wheelchair" useful for normal people as well. Something as simple as adding a ring on the back to attach a cart to could make it a "micro tractor". Or add an attachment that makes it into a "riding vacuum cleaner". (Might that actually solve another problem the handicapped have? Trying to push around a regular vacuum cleaner while sitting in a wheelchair doesn't sound like an easy task...) In that case, the design considerations to make it usable by the handicapped would be seen as "an act of kindness".

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