So here's my dumb little fantasy law, I'd love for anyone to tell me if this is stupid.
1. In the event of a bankruptcy proceeding, all source code for a hardware product shall be open-sourced.
2. In the event of a hardware product that is dependent upon cloud services being discontinued, instructions for "rooting" the product, and the firmware source code shall be open-sourced.
3. Companies that acquire the rights to patents of bankrupt companies and discontinued products must keep the cloud servers going or open-source blah blah.
The only serious counter argument I can think of here is the tangle of patents, to which I retort, the price of keeping the patents is keeping the furnaces powering the cloud servers running.
>> In the event of a bankruptcy proceeding, all source code for a hardware product shall be open-sourced.
I'm guessing you've never run a company into bankruptcy (which I take as a good thing.)
Bankruptcy is when liabilities exceed assets and cash doesn't exist. At that point the assets are sold to raise money to give pennies on the dollar to creditors. The assets are not "binned", they are sold. That includes intangible assets like domains, source code, hardware schematics, and so on.
What you are proposing is akin to suggesting "any buildings should become public domain" or "any cars they own should go to a local charity".
In essence you are taking one asset class and dictating how that class is disposed of. Why that class? Why not all of them?
Thirdly (I thought of another reason) it's trivial to simply store this class of asset in a separate structure, that has no liabilities and hence can't be bankrupt. It becomes simply a different asset class. (Separating assets from liabilities is a common business practice - even if a company "owns" their office, it's typically a different company.)
I don't think you're crazy, it's a good area to explore, but it's not practical to implement this in the business landscape we currently exist in.
> What you are proposing is akin to suggesting "any buildings should become public domain" or "any cars they own should go to a local charity".
I don't think this is accurate. I think they are proposing priority for the consumer in the hierarchy of creditors that is a little more specific about assets than the usual hierarchy.
All IP and licensing rights to IP could become specially encumbered during bankruptcy to enable a consumer priority on it, etc. I don't think it would be more difficult than some of the existing setup, but naturally much of the existing setup is more in theory than in practice.
Yup. This. The bankruptcy system already has tiered creditors (senior, junior, secured, unsecured) who take precedence in certain orders during bankruptcy.
In fact this already exists in accounts payable situations: customers may take precedence for goods not received before creditors, etc (depending on location and laws of course). But usually they don’t, sadly.
The "simple" answer is to handle these issues long before bankruptcy, with right to repair laws. It is not actually simple of course.
I don't think it would be unreasonable to mandate software for hardware products be pluggable in such a way that you can modify the runtime with hooks.
During the commercial, supported life of the product the consumer doesn't know any different. But at EOL, repair shops can make a market for "modules" that can do things like change the remote server a IoT device talks to. Removes requirements for DRM, fixes bugs etc.
Threat to commercial interests is really low here in my view, an average consumer pays for a product and pays for the SaaS portion because its convenient and provides value. Then the product reaches EOL and the aftermarket takes over. No different to say the long, exhaustive use of used cars (at least in the decades prior to digital integration in cars, it remains to be seen how the next two decades go re:software services ridden cars.)
But repairing hardware can be tricky (we've made hardware where the CPU got discontinued) - and of course repairing parts that contain firmware us another layer of hard.
As you point out mixing software and hardware (aka firmware) makes repair more-or-less impossible.
> I don't think you're crazy, it's a good area to explore, but it's not practical to implement this in the business landscape we currently exist in.
It's relatively straightforward. You put the code or whatever else your customers need into escrow with a third party. The code gets released if you discontinue the product or it otherwise leaves the market.
You then market that you're doing this, so that everyone A) knows they can pursue getting access to the escrowed stuff, B) it's a selling point to remove some of the vendor risk, and C) it's not just a capricious action to undermine creditor rights.
Of course, it may be harder to borrow money if you do this. And customers are generally not savvy enough to require this (though if you do a large enterprise deal, requiring code escrow is not an unknown term).
Putting code in escrow is usually done as part of the contract between the business and the customer, and the code is in escrow for that customer not for everyone.
The article talks about Medicare subsidising 80% of the purchase price for many customers. That'd be a fairly effective place to negotiate such an escrow contract.
Only everyone who goes bankrupt, and their creditors.
Rather the opposite for their customers.
I’m sure there’s a few cases where this would excessively hurt a company’s prospects (perhaps where a company has an innovative software product with a thin hardware component), but in the majority of cases losing access to the software of a hardware product as an asset is a relatively small loss, and the benefit to consumers is pretty huge. I’d support the trade off.
What would be the problem with making it a stipulation of the acquisition as a consumer protection law, regardless of the corporate structure? Either it goes to a buyer willing to take on the liability and continue operating it or wind it down cleanly in exchange for the IP (and bidders can price that liability in), or it goes to a government agency or NGO capable of open sourcing or extending its life.
I don’t know enough about how courts split up intangible assets like IP to suggest how to bundle it with this proposed liability, but I think it can be pushed up to insurance carriers like warranties are. Make the insurers liable so that they push the requirements downstream and make them first in line for the relevant IP as creditors. Allow them to argue in front of the bankruptcy court to define what bundle they are entitled to as creditors and them allow them to fire sale that bundle as part of the rest. If they can’t get enough to cover their calculations, they can dump it on the agency/NGO for free. (IANAL and I dont know what I’m talking about)
Let's say I buy a text editor from a bankrupt company. I take that code and incorporate it into my main product. You can buy the text editor separately, it just costs 20k (same as my main product.) Is that "operating it?"
Alternatively this asset is encumbered by these rules so no-one wants it, it gets Open Sourced. Creditors lose out on potential revenue to recover their losses.
Now let's assume the code base is 'large'. Maybe it contains licensed 3rd party code (shipped as source) maybe not. Someone has to check. Who's owning that someone to do the check? If the check misses code, and proprietary Google code gets released. Who will Google sue? (Hint: everyone)
The suggestion is flawed because it fundamentally changes the way assets are handled in bankruptcy. Or declares code not to be an asset (which in turn has unwelcome side effects.)
> Let's say I buy a text editor from a bankrupt company. I take that code and incorporate it into my main product. You can buy the text editor separately, it just costs 20k (same as my main product.) Is that "operating it?"
No, that’s operating a different product from the one customers of the bankrupt entity paid for. “Operating it” would mean stuff like decoupling the text editor from any service required to run it - like an extension server - by making just enough code open source to allow other users to run their own extension registries and updating the text editor binaries to allow setting custom endpoints. The acquirer can keep the rest of the code closed sourced and integrate it into their own products all they want. They can even stop updating the editor all together after they’re done fulfilling the requirements. The courts can decide where reasonableness ends with consumers in mind.
Honestly this seems like an intentionally obtuse example in a thread about a medical hardware product.
> Alternatively this asset is encumbered by these rules so no-one wants it, it gets Open Sourced. Creditors lose out on potential revenue to recover their losses.
Creditors lose out to higher priority creditors all the time. The #1 creditor should be the consumers who bought the products and have no protection otherwise (or maybe second only to unpaid employees).
> Now let's assume the code base is 'large'. Maybe it contains licensed 3rd party code (shipped as source) maybe not. Someone has to check. Who's owning that someone to do the check? If the check misses code, and proprietary Google code gets released. Who will Google sue? (Hint: everyone)
Binary blobs are fine for licensed code. That’s not new or radical (and even Windows is source available to the right customers). Licenses only extend far enough to allow the existing consumers to operate their devices. Besides, how would anyone acquire the IP without the components it licenses?
> The suggestion is flawed because it fundamentally changes the way assets are handled in bankruptcy. Or declares code not to be an asset (which in turn has unwelcome side effects.)
Yeah, I’m suggesting changes to bankruptcy and consumer protection laws. That goes with the territory.
The assets the usually goto a ip archive content heapvto slowly rot and ferment, in the hopes they cozld one dsy become a payday as prior art.So its not like they are useful beyond patent trolling.
Yeah so ultimately this means source code isn't considered an asset, but rather an integral part of a product that has been sold. This is how it should have been all along. It's the fundamental point of the free software movement. It's also how it was in the beginning, before companies like Microsoft realised they could use law and technical means to sell knowledge as a product. I hope one day we can go back to this and look back at this funny time when people made us think knowledge was a product.
In case of bankruptcy or other types of failure to maintain product, release code from escrow.
Although I wonder what would happen in this scheme if you use someone else's IP while creating a product, or parts of your stack are also obsolete.
with respect to similar sorts of things,
I think the library of congress used to get copies of copyrighted works. And patents have enough drawings and descriptions to (re)create what is being patented.
^ this sounds like a long-term good plan to me. Submit all code to qualify, or not. That should be the standard for all authority-approved things globally.
There already exists some limitations from the FDA regarding software. For example if you receive clearance (NB this is different than approval) for a device which uses AI, it cannot modify its own source code and any changes need to go through the clearance process again. (Or something like that it's been a while since I looked this up.)
I don't know that this is how things are currently structured, but if a company was required to submit a device's source code as a condition of receiving a 510(k) clearance perhaps there should also be a condition that the FDA can release this code in instances where the public interest in doing so would outweigh the IP interests of some piece of abandonware.
What are we talking about here? The exoskeleton maker didn’t go into bankruptcy. The exoskeleton is not dependent on cloud services (or at least it is not reported that they would have gone away) and no company acquired anyone.
You are proposing extensive changes, with undeniably serious chance of side effects and your proposal doesn’t even address the issue from the article.
Exactly. The problem here is that the company has set a policy not to support $100,000 medical equipment after 5 years. Mind boggling - imagine if an aircraft manufacturer said the same thing. Using aircraft as an example, they are still in service after 50 years and parts still available for many of them. A similar approach should be taken to equipment like this exoskeleton
Few companies write 100% of the software that runs on their hardware. If some insulin pump uses proprietary firmware licensed from Johnson & Johnson for some part of its operation, does Johnson & Johnson lose its entire firmware licensing business as soon as one customer goes bankrupt? Or are they forced to become a B2C company and manage and sell licenses to millions of people it had no relationship with before? Is it weaponizable: pick a competitor, get them to license some software to a shell company of yours that makes a token device with it, fold the shell company, and now the competitor is required to give away their firmware to the public (and you)?
Have you completely misunderstood the concept here? This isn't some IP virus that infects anyone that touches it. J&J keeps the IP that it owns, in all cases, obviously. The bankrupt company must release the IP that the bankrupt company owns, unless someone like J&J wants to acquire it and keep things running. Obviously a company that fails wouldn't destroy the IP of another company. Obviously the failed company only impacts the failed company IP. I think you may be trying too hard to find flaws in this idea, instead of trying to make it work.
Maybe I have? Could you explain your understanding of it? If it doesn't extend past the software the hardware vendor directly wrote, then it doesn't result in hardware owners being able to continue running the hardware after the manufacturer goes bankrupt, which was the purpose of the proposed "fantasy law".
If closed source solution of bankrupt company used closed source solution of a non-bankrupt company then you just need a new licence. If non-bankrupt company is not issuing new licences then it is not supporting its software -> it needs to open source it. You can apply this rule recursively.
The only problem I see is the licence cost (or should it cost anything for existing licence owners of bankrupt company).
Exactly.
Proprietary software and software patents need to end. In the case of medical devices, such restrictions violate the ADA by blocking access to reasonable accomodations.
>> Proprietary software and software patents need to end.
I'm with you on software patents. On copyright (from which proprietary software is derived) I'm less convinced.
My argument is two-fold;
Firstly, copyright law is the only thing that allows Open Source and Free Software to exist. Copyright is the mechanism that grants an author control of their work, and is the mechanism that forces people building on OSS/Free Software to release code.
You talk about "ending proprietary software", which in turn means effectively removing copyright, since it removes the authors control over their source code.
Secondly, and from a completely different direction, killing proprietary software basically kills all the software people use.
Sure OSS is great at infrastructure. But it has performed poorly in becoming the software people care about. Without proprietary software there's no Chrome, Google Search, Gmail, YouTube, Facebook, Netflix, MS office, Dropbox, AWS, et al.
In infrastructure there's no iOS, Windows, Macs, Google services (aka Android as we know it) etc.
To argue that OSS has clones or replacements of this stuff is o miss the point that proprietary software created these products and markets. And for all the clones that may be out there most have < 10% market share, actually most have < 1% market share, because most clones are either poor refections or simply get their feature list from the proprietary work.
No, ending proprietary software does not end copyright. Even after reading your arguments, I'm not sure how you got to that conclusion.
You argued quite the opposite, in fact, by claiming copyright (and not license terms) ensures open source software.
It is entirely possible to ban proprietary software in cases of human rights and public interest (e.g., open source medical firmware, to use the OP case) while maintaining copyright law even as it exists now.
Case 2 probably ends up being hacked to mine cryptocurrency. If it's a prosthesis, I guess it secretly does delivery runs when you're sleeping. If you (a normal consumer) don't burn out the motor/blow up the battery while messing with it.
There are tradeoffs from supporting-but-not-really-supporting unmaintained products. Also, in this case, it sounds like they were missing hardware that wouldn't have been fixed by publishing the software.
Maybe it could be done by considering the technical dependencies as a debt toward customers that should be higher in the debt hierarchy. So if any debtor want the assets of a company, he will have to find a way to manage this sort of "technical/services" debt first.
I don’t fully understand how bankruptcy works but isn’t it just gives whatever you have to creditors? Source code and hardware designs fits into assets. No?
Yes, thats the current law in most places. The op is proposing that not all agreements made by a company should be void on bankruptcy.
Really, there are cases where this is obviously a change that needs to happen. Eg, if a company holds personal data, the agreements that allowed a company to obtain it should live across bankruptcy with the data, not be terminated if it is transferred.
This sort of arrangement is common in real property. For example, if you buy a house where you have to access it via some other private land, the agreement that you can do so is arranged in such a way that it can't be voided when that land is sold, even during bankruptcy. You can't do that for data AFAIK (would love for a lawyer to comment). It needs to be enabled and made mandatory in cases like this.
There is some limited ability to do this: creditors can get a "charge" registered against intellectual property, so theoretically in the OP's case one might be able to design a legal construct that would cause a bankruptcy court to give rights to some special purpose vehicle that is set up (in advance) to represent the patients. But I don't know if that would work in all cases
Not crazy, but the actual issue was due to the FDA.
Please don’t let the following stop your thinking. We need many solutions.
FTA: He said that the company is no longer repairing exoskeletons older than five years because the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates the devices, has approved their usage for that timespan.
All owners of hardware should have a licence to inspect and modify the code it runs. Not necessarily open source, just something tied to the hardware itself at a bare minimum.
Why in the world did the reporters not try to investigate the FDA rules that supposedly prevents this, instead of trying to shame the company? Either the company is wrong, or that's the real story here.
It's hard to track down a vague insinuation of a rule. If the company wants to use it as a defense, I think it's okay to put the burden on them to be specific.
Speaking from experience these types of technical details often get cut from news reporting anyways. I wouldn't be surprised if the author of this peice did in fact look that up but it got cut from the final copy.
" the FDA believes the following types of activities, in general, involve changes that affect the legally marketed device’s performance or safety specifications and are likely to constitute remanufacturing:
. . .
Changes to the device’s control mechanism, operating principle or energy type."
If the company was no longer maintaining OEM parts for the older model device it might be prevented from using slightly different parts from newer models to repair the older model without basically needing to have the older device + new part be cleared as a completely different medical device. I'm speculating and this might not be entirely accurate.
Edit: actually it appears that the company marketing this device did not comply with an FDA order to conduct a postmarket surveilence study to asses its risks.
In September 2015 the "FDA informed ReWalk that its noncompliance with the postmarket surveillance study deadline rendered the device misbranded." This is from a 2020 class action lawsuit against the company which was dismissed but it's not clear to me that the misbranding issue was ever taken care of, which could be the reason the company was initially hesitant to provide service to the device? This is not entirely clear to me one way or the other. https://casetext.com/case/yan-v-rewalk-robotics-ltd-3
I mean, I guess it does make me curious how you should go about regulating a device like this.
Like, if the metal fails and you have a horrible fall and break your hip and shoulder, that's pretty different from an iPhone that won't turn on.
If this is only approved for 5 years, shouldn't the guy be replacing it rather than repairing it? And shouldn't health insurance be covering that, at least beyond the deductible or whatever?
> I mean, I guess it does make me curious how you should go about regulating a device like this.
That's actually my point. There's an interesting policy discussion to be had here, and instead of starting it, they just decided to smear a company.
> Like, if the metal fails and you have a horrible fall and break your hip and shoulder, that's pretty different from an iPhone that won't turn on.
> If this is only approved for 5 years, shouldn't the guy be replacing it rather than repairing it? And shouldn't health insurance be covering that, at least beyond the deductible or whatever?
Probably, but (to throw out a hypothetical alternative) you can also imagine a situation where e.g. inspection can tell him if the whole device actually needs replacement.
I don't have the answer here - I just know I'd like the discussion to revolve around the merits of the situation.
yeah, it would have been interesting to have seen some deeper digging.
for instance, did the fda simply not renew because the company didn’t try? was this just the company being lazy and attempting to deflect blame onto a spoooooky faceless gov agency? it the company actually gave a good faith attempt, was there some reason the fda said “nope?”
tangential but related, this highlights why we need better funded journalistic institutions rather than lowest tier trash because it’s “free”, journalists need to be able to afford to dig deeper to tell us who is screwing us over in situations like this.
it’s hard for us (society) to advocate for something if we don’t know what the real story is because our investigators (journalists) are hamstrung by lack of funds.
journalist institutions being underfunded only helps crooked governments and crooked company owners keep us in the dark.
If that were true, the job would be done by someone who took a personal interest in the subject and didn't need to be paid for reporting it. This is the opposite; it's someone doing a bad job because there's money in the profession and they want to get some of it without actually doing the work that would earn it.
Perhaps. Yet more likely that they're pressured into publishing so often they have little time for thorough investigations. If there were more money in it more people could afford to do it full time, and quality could improve.
As for needing to provide parts into the future, a friend's company does aftermarket service for many expensive pieces of government equipment. Presumably they're able to make what's needed because the government requires it of the original manufacturer.
The government could require that manufacturers either supply replacement parts or specs for someone else to manufacture them. I suppose the latter would be required to avoid gouging. It'd be interesting to think about the secondary effects—if you can't make a lot of money off of service, will you make longer-lasting products and charge appropriately?
Right to repair should cover things like putting locks on devices that are illegal to unlock to repair. Making it illegal to do whatever the Frick you want to something you bought. Making it illegal to make parts yourself or have 3rd party companies make a part.
It should not force companies to build parts for you. Forcing people to do work they do not want to is insane. That kind of talk would prevent me from building anything and letting my neighbor borrow it.
And no, saying "it wouldnt apply to you just <insert demographic>" doesn't make me feel any better about that.
> Forcing people to do work they do not want to is insane.
Does "We won't send you this part we already built and currently have in stock, and we won't send you a schematic for it either. You must reverse engineer it and build it yourself if you want to resume being able to walk and control your bowels and bladder" constitute forcing a person to do work they do not want to?
> It should not force companies to build parts for you.
If a company is unable to provide long-term support in the form of replacement parts, then they shouldn't be allowed to sell it to consumers. For decades, and for most devices, it was trivial to find replacement parts and/or swap out identical parts, even if they weren't made by the original manufacturer. You can get replacement parts for cars made in the 90s, 80s, 70s.
It should not be acceptable to buy something as important and life-changing and expensive as this exoskeleton, and the manufacturer just fucks off and provides no way to maintain it long-term.
Freedom doesn't exist. Every corporation is bound by laws and regulations. "Forcing people to do work they do not want to". We aren't talking about regular people like you or me. We're talking about corporations. They're regularly "forced" to do things they don't want to, to the benefit of their customers and society as a whole. You need better arguments if you want to argue against regulating companies.
If the sales pitch is that a product can help someone with a massive permanent disability, but there's no sort of long-term vision for after-sales service, that seems borderline scammy. You know going in that the customer will need to keep using it, and also that technical products sometimes break down and need repairs.
Was the customer told that the expected lifetime for thos undoubtedly extremely expensive equipment was only five years when he purchased it?
Also, supporting early models for a long time is a great way to learn about the ways that it fails, and fix those failings in future generations. Although, it seems like companies these days don't seem to care at all about the longevity of their products, and that is the real problem.
Were the companies required to provide parts for decades by regulation? And the regulation had been there when they were selling the first prototypes?
When the earliest cars/PCs were pushed to the market, did the government tell the manufacturers that they have to provide parts for decades, otherwise they'll be punished in this or that way?
Not a rhetorical questions. I genuinely don't know the answer. But adminttedly I'd be quite surprise if the answer is yes.
> For decades, and for most devices, it was trivial to find replacement parts and/or swap out identical parts…
This seems like a stretch for anything other than cars, pcs, and large appliances. I doubt this has been true for a long time for anything under $100 and more electrically complicated than a switch and a motor.
Hang on, what about the part where the FDA only approved the thing for a 5 year use and essentially pushed the manufacturer into liability if they worked on it after that period? Maybe that’s the issue that needs repairing first.
It doesn't sound like a hard and fast rule. It seems like it's whatever the manufacturer asks for in terms of "intended working life." This _seems_ to be the original FDA certification for the device:
The problem here, of course, is it's not the device itself, but the simple remote control peripheral that is designed to switch device operating modes.
The FDA should force manufacturers of "two piece" systems like this to have backup controls on the device itself and to exclude these non-medical components designed for control from any regulation covering "intended design life."
It seems like a daffy middle ground that the FDA lets exist and manufacturers take advantage of when they can.
> It seems like it's whatever the manufacturer asks for in terms of "intended working life."
I would guess the FDA makes their certification easier or harder to pass based on how long the device is expected to last. If the 5 year lifespan is what hits the middle ground for that company between cost-of-certification and useful-product-life, then it's up to the FDA to make a longer lifespan feasible to get certified.
Your point is valid, and is improved when we recognize it's not an either/or blame game when acknowledging the parts of the system that need improvement for failures like this person experienced.
But he did have the right to repair... right? He just couldn't get the part. The article title is misleading. They don't support old medical devices, they were following the rules. Yes, they should have handled the customer service better. Escalated it. But it doesn't sound like some big evil company locking people out of their legs because they tinkered with them. Let's not lump it all in the same category.
Also, this line is beyond ridiculous:
"Straight’s path to paralysis started in the 1990s at the Saratoga Race Course".
My understanding of the issue was that he did not know what the part was. It was a connector and there is dozens if not hundreds different families of them. So very likely with suitable bill of materials which right to repair would have provided it could have been found ordered and replaced by third-party.
That depends on how exactly a right to repair law is going to regulate things. Will a company have to provide parts for older models forever? Because in the article it says that he was going to fix it himself but couldn't find the part that connects the battery to his controller watch.
Not sure about the US but in some countries this is regulated for cars. Companies are required to provide parts for a certain amount of years after discontinuation of the product.
It seems abundantly reasonable that a similar requirement be imposed for prosthesis. And it would also be very reasonable for the required period to be longer than that of cars.
So yeah, not forever, but definitely not a a short period either.
I think this was something that used to be regulated but is not now. There's plenty of financial justification for supporting cars 10 or more years by making parts, since most last longer than that. For niche products that are practically one-offs, I can see where it might need to be regulated because the economics won't encourage it.
They shouldn't be making such unnecessary proprietary components. For cases where there really is no way around using custom hardware, at end of life the specifications should be made public so that a third party can manufacture them.
In this specific case, the real issue is just the incredibly short service lifetime. While different medical devices are going to have different lifetimes, manufacturers need to continue to provide support for at least 36 months after reporting that they plan to discontinue support, which is 60% of the lifetime of this product. Typically medical devices are supported for much longer.
> They shouldn't be making such unnecessary proprietary components.
Perhaps not, but that's not right to repair. Pretty much everything in any modern smartphone is completely proprietary.
And as the article said, the battery wasn't proprietary. The missing part was the battery connector. That doesn't even suggest to me that it's wildly proprietary, just that it can't be found anymore. Lots of components that are easily sourced now would be challenging for an ordinary person to source in a decade.
> at end of life the specifications should be made public so that a third party can manufacture them.
This also isn't right to repair. In fact, it probably doesn't help much at all: a sufficiently specialized part on a specialized medical device is going to be so niche that the cost of an aftermarket part will be huge. There's probably what, twenty of these things in the wild? A hundred? How many aftermarket manufacturers will even pick up the phone for a one-off custom part, spec or no?
> manufacturers need to continue to provide support for at least 36 months after reporting that they plan to discontinue support, which is 60% of the lifetime of this product
The device was supported for the regulatory limit of five years, and the owner has been using it for ten. Assuming they did give three years of support after discontinuing the product, it's now two years beyond that.
For a product only approved to be sold for five years by a regulator, I think the fact that the only piece that couldn't be serviced after double that time is a battery connector is pretty impressive (all things considered). Customer service aside, I'm not sure how much more you could possibly ask from this company.
> How many aftermarket manufacturers will even pick up the phone for a one-off custom part, spec or no?
If you offered 1% of the entire device's replacement price, for a part that the average tinkerer could build, I think you'd find a stampede of competent offers. I'm sure much lower amounts would work too.
The point is there's a price where you could get the parts made, and that price is much much lower than a new model. A thousand dollars every few years is something that could go in a budget.
Don't focus too much on the exact number I used, I went on the high end just to make a point, also it's supposed to be a per-major-fix price not a per-part price.
It's a terrible solution because it sets a price floor that makes it impossible for people to afford repairs. You need a $10 battery connector? 1% of 100k.
It's a vulnerable population who needs these parts. Probably lots of folks who can't work. Medicaid caps the amount of money you can have in an account at $8000 max. Pricing parts this way will push people into abject poverty out of desperation.
How about making parts for all medical devices something that must be covered by healthcare? Or, and this one is a crazy one, provide universal coverage so you can just get a new device at a reasonable price that's negotiated by the government?
Again, I was only comparing to your scenario of manufacturers not picking up the phone.
It was not a general-purpose suggestion, it was a weak proposition on purpose for the sake of simplicity.
Please stop treating it as a suggestion of what should happen. That post only exists to counter a specific sentence, it does not exist beyond that scenario.
Analogy: If I say a punch in the gut is more realistic than getting shot, I am not advocating for punches in the gut, and you don't need to tell me about better alternatives to punches in the gut.
> How many aftermarket manufacturers will even pick up the phone for a one-off custom part, spec or no?
That would depend entirely upon the part.
With (detailed) specs being available, quite a lot of skilled repair techs would be able to bodge something competent together (!) to meet those specs.
Re-manufacturing completely 100% good parts could be a thing sure, for sufficient volumes.
But real world situations for low volumes tend to be "lets get it working well enough using the tools we have available". Creativity is required. ;)
The results for those situations are improved dramatically if there's detailed, good quality docs easily accessible to the people working on it.
> Perhaps not, but that's not right to repair. Pretty much everything in any modern smartphone is completely proprietary.
That's exactly what right to repair refers to! Companies can't stop you from taking a screwdriver to an object in your possession, the issue is that by using non-standard components they make what should be an easy repair extremely difficult if not impossible without going through them, allowing them to effectively prevent repair. Smartphones are the poster child for lack of right to repair.
> That doesn't even suggest to me that it's wildly proprietary, just that it can't be found anymore.
If it wasn't proprietary, it would be able to be found. Off the shelf battery connectors are produced in the millions and remain available for decades. The whole reason for this issue was that instead of using one of those, they went with something non-standard that a person couldn't get, and despite having them on hand they wouldn't give one to the user.
> This also isn't right to repair.
Again, it is.
> In fact, it probably doesn't help much at all: a sufficiently specialized part on a specialized medical device is going to be so niche that the cost of an aftermarket part will be huge.
So long as the cost of replacing the part is less than the cost of replacing the entire system that depends on that part, it still makes sense. Aftermarket manufacturers specialize in making such one offs.
> The device was supported for the regulatory limit of five years, and the owner has been using it for ten.
The FDA doesn't have regulatory limits for how long products can be supported, it sets minimums for how long products need to be supported. The company chose to drop support after 5 years, it was not barred from providing support afterwards. If you read the article, the company both did provide the support requested and issued an apology for not doing so sooner.
> Assuming they did give three years of support after discontinuing the product, it's now two years beyond that.
Part of that end of life process is notifying operators of the devices that support will be ending, giving them time to get spare parts as needed. There is no indication that this was done.
> For a product only approved to be sold for five years by a regulator,
Again, not what happened.
> I think the fact that the only piece that couldn't be serviced after double that time is a battery connector is pretty impressive
There is no indication that any other part has been successfully serviced in that time period. The battery connector was the part that happened to fail, and when it did bricked the system. Other parts may have failed in a way that didn't render the system inoperable, and other critical components may have yet to fail.
> I'm not sure how much more you could possibly ask from this company.
Designing products to utilize source-able components and making specifications for custom components available after you stop manufacturing them are two things that can be asked of any company. It costs essentially nothing to do either. It even benefits the company to do so - using standard components reduces production costs and decreases supply chain risk, while publishing part specs allows a company to offload continuing support costs onto third parties.
I'm not going to read or respond to most of what you wrote because frankly I don't care to because a lot of it is nonsense (a real example: I'm not going to repair my $600 washer when the part I need costs $500), but I'll respond to this:
> Companies can't stop you from taking a screwdriver to an object in your possession, the issue is that by using non-standard components they make what should be an easy repair extremely difficult if not impossible without going through them, allowing them to effectively prevent repair. Smartphones are the poster child for lack of right to repair.
This is objectively wrong. You can't repair your own phone without voiding the warranty. Which is to say, you don't have the legal right to repair your own phone, even if you sourced compatible parts.
The right to repair is the right to repair your device on your own terms, and for other companies to be able to offer compatible parts. An iPhone screen that comes with DRM makes it impossible to do that. Licensing rules that prevent companies from offering service for devices (e.g., screen repair) makes it impossible to do that. Having a tricky PCB doesn't impede your rights.
The existence of proprietary parts doesn't in any way invalidate your right to repair unless those parts are specifically designed to make it physically impossible to repair your device. Hell, even the most technically complicated parts in popular consumer devices can be replicated by third parties and have been for years, but selling those parts is often illegal and the devices are designed to detect and reject those parts.
> You can't repair your own phone without voiding the warranty. Which is to say, you don't have the legal right to repair your own phone, even if you sourced compatible parts.
You have the legal right to void your warranty. You warranty likely voids itself in a reasonably short period of time regardless of whether you conduct repairs, and it would be absurd for the seller to offer a warranty that covers objects that have been arbitrarily tampered with. That's emphatically NOT what right to repair refers to.
> The right to repair is the right to repair your device on your own terms, and for other companies to be able to offer compatible parts.
Yes, this is the correct definition, and the one I have been using in this thread, and the one that mandates making replacement parts reasonably available.
> An iPhone screen that comes with DRM makes it impossible to do that. Licensing rules that prevent companies from offering service for devices (e.g., screen repair) makes it impossible to do that. Having a tricky PCB doesn't impede your rights.
Yes, these are all right to repair issues caused by the over-use of proprietary components.
> The existence of proprietary parts doesn't in any way invalidate your right to repair unless those parts are specifically designed to make it physically impossible to repair your device. Hell, even the most technically complicated parts in popular consumer devices can be replicated by third parties and have been for years, but selling those parts is often illegal and the devices are designed to detect and reject those parts.
I don't think you know what the word proprietary means. You are complaining about the use of proprietary components.
> And this is why right to repair laws are a thing.
Yes, and also why products should be open sourced and documented when they're declared obsolete by their manufacturer, or the manufacturer cease operations. Let people be responsible for all repairs they do to their devices; this man would probably not give a damn about regulations if the alternative was essentially to become paralyzed again.
He's not being blocked from repairing it, and he doesn't need to hack it.
He just needs a part. (They did eventually send it to him.) If they had not, he doesn't need the right to repair it, rather would need someone to manufacture the part.
Right to repair, in a broad sense, also covers access to parts. This is definitely an edge case and we might want to just consider that if we're going to do experiments on disabled with the aim of helping them, and they want to continue using the tools, we might have to subsidize access to the parts until they die.
I don’t think it’s an edge case at all. Right to repair doesn’t require a manufacturer to continue making parts or spend their own money on creating a large inventory of them. It’s one thing to require Apple to sell you a phone screen they are still making, it’s another to require them to be able to sell any number of them at any time from ones they do not.
Right to repair is a negative right. There’s no reason to turn it into a positive one.
It's an edge case because the supply is so small and the hardware is so specialized. If this were an iPhone screen there's be a dozen companies in china capable of producing and selling them near cost if apple didn't interfere, and we'd have plenty of people willing to repair and resell the screens if apple would stop abusing US customs to seize repaired screens as they've done in the past.
The point still stands, no ‘right to repair’ can force manufacturers to stock X number of parts, or spin up production lines again, at some future date. Regardless of the company’s condition.
Even the pentagon can’t force that, they just pay a large amount of money to a new company to recreate the original part to the exact same spec.
Theoretically it’s possible to enact new legislation to mandate that something sufficient must be set aside in some sort of escrow system, and punish companies for not doing so, but that would probably result in most manufacturing companies fleeing the US….
I agree with that, and it's possible that half of what people buy and want to repair aren't going to be repairable under market conditions. Probably more; most of these cases it's just economically infeasible to repair anything that isn't new or produced recently, with supply lines still active, and it's fine when nobody wants to pay for it.
So for my definition, what makes this an edge case is specifically it's expensive medical equipment that a disabled user can't pay to acquire a part for, and companies aren't willing to produce anyway because it's so niche. 99% of equipment probably falls under "I want to repair it and someone (myself or a repair company) wants to fix it" or "I don't want to repair it because it's so expensive". The rest would be the edge case where you want to repair it and you literally can't afford to - even if you could produce the parts.
By the way, I hate this article, I just want the information and not have to parse an entire goddamn magazine to get to it.
Once again, that thing falls under FDA regulations. You’re telling us about a world with 3rd party mix and match components, all FDA approved in any and all combinations on 5 year plus old devices?
I'm supportive of the right to repair in every sense, but even the strongest right to repair laws would not have helped improve the outcome in this case.
The strongest right to repair law would probably require detailed schematics, BOMs, and (sufficiently detailed) manufacturing steps being available for all the parts.
That would enable people to organise getting replacements manufactured themselves. :)
I love that future, but that's not right to repair. It's simply not what that means. You can want open source manufacturing, and you can want that legally mandated, but not having manufacturing steps doesn't take away your right to repair something you own.
> Given the mechanical complexity of such devices. Would it ever be profitable to continue producing parts for them?
For most repair parts, no. Especially not since need for such a device is anticorrelated with earnings. The article's complainant, being a disabled former jockey, probably make <40K in the years leading up to his accident and little to none in the years since.
> Medicare said it would start paying for 80 percent of exoskeletons, which at Lifeward cost about $100,000.
> And although that coverage doesn’t extend to paraplegics who have injuries to their spine as high up as Straight
Oh man, i feel for everyone who live in the USA and require any sort of medical help. Either you spend all your hard earned money or you got to get in a though fight with the medical administration.
While the US healthcare system does suck in numerous ways, is this kind of thing even available elsewhere, via socialized medicine? (Maybe the answer is yes, which would be great!)
Oftentimes the big issues with the development of new Medical Devices are pre/post market studies and data collection for those studies. The regulatory path for this ends up quite complicated & contradictory when juggled with HIPPA, GDPR and the various rules around how these studies are executed. This means there is a lot of tricky nuance to what markets a Medical Device company might try to target.
While I certainly wouldn't call myself an expert on this, having worked within the industry I've been able to make the following observations:
- Novel medical devices are often created by very small startups, who in essence exist solely to create a PoC. A larger Medical Device company then buys them to actually start walking through the regulatory hurdles which will bring them to market.
- The market it gets initially released in is rarely connected to the location it was invented (ex: Invented by European startup but released in the US is weirdly common). But if a product is successful enough then an even larger Medical device company with access to more international markets might swoop in and purchase the mid sized company.
- European regulatory agencies will oftentimes be lenient on products that have received FDA approval, but the reverse is less clear cut. So going through the FDA first can be more efficient, especially when considering the market size of the US along with the fact that you only need to support one language. In practice this pushes out the timeline for the first European release of a device.
- GDPR is actually not very different from HIPPA, perhaps not even as strict, but it is more ambiguous and that's a problem. The key difference is that, right now, everyone knows exactly how to follow HIPPA but the reverse is not true for GDPR. Some things that might be allowed by one might subtly contradict the other and there is no third party Medical Device companies can throw money at that will absorb the liability of this by saying whether or not they are GDPR compliant.
- Since Medical Device companies live & die on their study data, this data collection paradox has further pushed out timelines for when medical devices are first released in Europe.
- A European might see a cool new Medical device from a startup in their local newspaper but then never actually gain access to it for another 20 years.
So personally I'd say it largely reduces down to the regulatory environment + market size. The US can be among the strictest, but not only is getting past that worth it for market access, but by passing those strict hurdles, releasing to other international markets becomes much easier since you got the hard part over with.
Not to mention the fact that, in a similar way a popular programming language might have more "community resources" and a larger hiring pool, the same could also be said for navigating regulatory environments. So popularity has a self-amplifying effect.
If I'm understanding correctly, would the maker accept to repair the structure will be breaking the law. In this case is understandable. The only thing worst than being paralyzed is being paralyzed while burnt alive by charging a broken battery too old. At some point the risk is just too high for the maker.
Maybe those devices should be just leased for a month fee, so the company is supported and can keep the lights on. Insurance and government could support the man paying a part of the bill.
From the article and the remedy the CEO provided, it seems to be that working on the device themselves would open the manufacturer to liabilities or breaking regulations imposed FDA regulation. The CEO shipped the dude a replacement part so that they could carry out the repair themselves.
> He said that the company is no longer repairing exoskeletons older than five years because the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates the devices, has approved their usage for that timespan.
So in the end it was a mix of bad company actions and regulations that made this repair a struggle for him.
I heard from a mobility scooter technician that there is barely any second market for the as typically the health insurance will get you a new one every few years. So similar to the companies response to just buy the newest model.
> was a mix of bad company actions and regulations
We actually don’t know the second part. What we know is that the company claimed that regulations were involved. Might or might not be true.
Wouldn’t be the first time when a company didn’t want to do something for financial reasons and they decided to read the regulations in a way which made them more money.
In other news Microsoft abandoned the surface duo after 1 yearly android update. If you don't control the software you don't really own the device, whether it be a phone or an exoskeleton.
http://archive.today/cKeCi
So here's my dumb little fantasy law, I'd love for anyone to tell me if this is stupid.
1. In the event of a bankruptcy proceeding, all source code for a hardware product shall be open-sourced.
2. In the event of a hardware product that is dependent upon cloud services being discontinued, instructions for "rooting" the product, and the firmware source code shall be open-sourced.
3. Companies that acquire the rights to patents of bankrupt companies and discontinued products must keep the cloud servers going or open-source blah blah.
The only serious counter argument I can think of here is the tangle of patents, to which I retort, the price of keeping the patents is keeping the furnaces powering the cloud servers running.
Am I crazy here?
>> In the event of a bankruptcy proceeding, all source code for a hardware product shall be open-sourced.
I'm guessing you've never run a company into bankruptcy (which I take as a good thing.)
Bankruptcy is when liabilities exceed assets and cash doesn't exist. At that point the assets are sold to raise money to give pennies on the dollar to creditors. The assets are not "binned", they are sold. That includes intangible assets like domains, source code, hardware schematics, and so on.
What you are proposing is akin to suggesting "any buildings should become public domain" or "any cars they own should go to a local charity".
In essence you are taking one asset class and dictating how that class is disposed of. Why that class? Why not all of them?
Thirdly (I thought of another reason) it's trivial to simply store this class of asset in a separate structure, that has no liabilities and hence can't be bankrupt. It becomes simply a different asset class. (Separating assets from liabilities is a common business practice - even if a company "owns" their office, it's typically a different company.)
I don't think you're crazy, it's a good area to explore, but it's not practical to implement this in the business landscape we currently exist in.
> What you are proposing is akin to suggesting "any buildings should become public domain" or "any cars they own should go to a local charity".
I don't think this is accurate. I think they are proposing priority for the consumer in the hierarchy of creditors that is a little more specific about assets than the usual hierarchy.
All IP and licensing rights to IP could become specially encumbered during bankruptcy to enable a consumer priority on it, etc. I don't think it would be more difficult than some of the existing setup, but naturally much of the existing setup is more in theory than in practice.
Yup. This. The bankruptcy system already has tiered creditors (senior, junior, secured, unsecured) who take precedence in certain orders during bankruptcy.
In fact this already exists in accounts payable situations: customers may take precedence for goods not received before creditors, etc (depending on location and laws of course). But usually they don’t, sadly.
The "simple" answer is to handle these issues long before bankruptcy, with right to repair laws. It is not actually simple of course.
I don't think it would be unreasonable to mandate software for hardware products be pluggable in such a way that you can modify the runtime with hooks.
During the commercial, supported life of the product the consumer doesn't know any different. But at EOL, repair shops can make a market for "modules" that can do things like change the remote server a IoT device talks to. Removes requirements for DRM, fixes bugs etc.
Threat to commercial interests is really low here in my view, an average consumer pays for a product and pays for the SaaS portion because its convenient and provides value. Then the product reaches EOL and the aftermarket takes over. No different to say the long, exhaustive use of used cars (at least in the decades prior to digital integration in cars, it remains to be seen how the next two decades go re:software services ridden cars.)
I'm 100% behind right to repair.
But repairing hardware can be tricky (we've made hardware where the CPU got discontinued) - and of course repairing parts that contain firmware us another layer of hard.
As you point out mixing software and hardware (aka firmware) makes repair more-or-less impossible.
That’s the manufacturer’s problem to solve. It’s quite achievable.
that's what documentation is for - give us the specs so that somebody somewhere can figure out how to replace it.
> I don't think you're crazy, it's a good area to explore, but it's not practical to implement this in the business landscape we currently exist in.
It's relatively straightforward. You put the code or whatever else your customers need into escrow with a third party. The code gets released if you discontinue the product or it otherwise leaves the market.
You then market that you're doing this, so that everyone A) knows they can pursue getting access to the escrowed stuff, B) it's a selling point to remove some of the vendor risk, and C) it's not just a capricious action to undermine creditor rights.
Of course, it may be harder to borrow money if you do this. And customers are generally not savvy enough to require this (though if you do a large enterprise deal, requiring code escrow is not an unknown term).
Putting code in escrow is usually done as part of the contract between the business and the customer, and the code is in escrow for that customer not for everyone.
The article talks about Medicare subsidising 80% of the purchase price for many customers. That'd be a fairly effective place to negotiate such an escrow contract.
Sure-- the point is the escrow infrastructure already exists. And it's been used the exact way I describe.
See e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_code_escrow#Software_op...
As an option between developers and customers, of course you can do this now, and it happens.
That's very different though to a law that requires source to be released.
The former is something you do because you believe it gives you the edge in a sale.
The latter is a regulatory framework that imposes problems on everyone unilaterally.
Only everyone who goes bankrupt, and their creditors.
Rather the opposite for their customers.
I’m sure there’s a few cases where this would excessively hurt a company’s prospects (perhaps where a company has an innovative software product with a thin hardware component), but in the majority of cases losing access to the software of a hardware product as an asset is a relatively small loss, and the benefit to consumers is pretty huge. I’d support the trade off.
What would be the problem with making it a stipulation of the acquisition as a consumer protection law, regardless of the corporate structure? Either it goes to a buyer willing to take on the liability and continue operating it or wind it down cleanly in exchange for the IP (and bidders can price that liability in), or it goes to a government agency or NGO capable of open sourcing or extending its life.
I don’t know enough about how courts split up intangible assets like IP to suggest how to bundle it with this proposed liability, but I think it can be pushed up to insurance carriers like warranties are. Make the insurers liable so that they push the requirements downstream and make them first in line for the relevant IP as creditors. Allow them to argue in front of the bankruptcy court to define what bundle they are entitled to as creditors and them allow them to fire sale that bundle as part of the rest. If they can’t get enough to cover their calculations, they can dump it on the agency/NGO for free. (IANAL and I dont know what I’m talking about)
Define "continue operating it".
Let's say I buy a text editor from a bankrupt company. I take that code and incorporate it into my main product. You can buy the text editor separately, it just costs 20k (same as my main product.) Is that "operating it?"
Alternatively this asset is encumbered by these rules so no-one wants it, it gets Open Sourced. Creditors lose out on potential revenue to recover their losses.
Now let's assume the code base is 'large'. Maybe it contains licensed 3rd party code (shipped as source) maybe not. Someone has to check. Who's owning that someone to do the check? If the check misses code, and proprietary Google code gets released. Who will Google sue? (Hint: everyone)
The suggestion is flawed because it fundamentally changes the way assets are handled in bankruptcy. Or declares code not to be an asset (which in turn has unwelcome side effects.)
> Let's say I buy a text editor from a bankrupt company. I take that code and incorporate it into my main product. You can buy the text editor separately, it just costs 20k (same as my main product.) Is that "operating it?"
No, that’s operating a different product from the one customers of the bankrupt entity paid for. “Operating it” would mean stuff like decoupling the text editor from any service required to run it - like an extension server - by making just enough code open source to allow other users to run their own extension registries and updating the text editor binaries to allow setting custom endpoints. The acquirer can keep the rest of the code closed sourced and integrate it into their own products all they want. They can even stop updating the editor all together after they’re done fulfilling the requirements. The courts can decide where reasonableness ends with consumers in mind.
Honestly this seems like an intentionally obtuse example in a thread about a medical hardware product.
> Alternatively this asset is encumbered by these rules so no-one wants it, it gets Open Sourced. Creditors lose out on potential revenue to recover their losses.
Creditors lose out to higher priority creditors all the time. The #1 creditor should be the consumers who bought the products and have no protection otherwise (or maybe second only to unpaid employees).
> Now let's assume the code base is 'large'. Maybe it contains licensed 3rd party code (shipped as source) maybe not. Someone has to check. Who's owning that someone to do the check? If the check misses code, and proprietary Google code gets released. Who will Google sue? (Hint: everyone)
Binary blobs are fine for licensed code. That’s not new or radical (and even Windows is source available to the right customers). Licenses only extend far enough to allow the existing consumers to operate their devices. Besides, how would anyone acquire the IP without the components it licenses?
> The suggestion is flawed because it fundamentally changes the way assets are handled in bankruptcy. Or declares code not to be an asset (which in turn has unwelcome side effects.)
Yeah, I’m suggesting changes to bankruptcy and consumer protection laws. That goes with the territory.
This is why the concept of "source code escrow" exists, as well as escrow in general.
The assets the usually goto a ip archive content heapvto slowly rot and ferment, in the hopes they cozld one dsy become a payday as prior art.So its not like they are useful beyond patent trolling.
Yeah so ultimately this means source code isn't considered an asset, but rather an integral part of a product that has been sold. This is how it should have been all along. It's the fundamental point of the free software movement. It's also how it was in the beginning, before companies like Microsoft realised they could use law and technical means to sell knowledge as a product. I hope one day we can go back to this and look back at this funny time when people made us think knowledge was a product.
This is why I really like the idea of establishing communism
I think what you really want is:
- create a medical product
- apply for FDA approval and put code in escrow
- get approval
In case of bankruptcy or other types of failure to maintain product, release code from escrow.
Although I wonder what would happen in this scheme if you use someone else's IP while creating a product, or parts of your stack are also obsolete.
with respect to similar sorts of things, I think the library of congress used to get copies of copyrighted works. And patents have enough drawings and descriptions to (re)create what is being patented.
^ this sounds like a long-term good plan to me. Submit all code to qualify, or not. That should be the standard for all authority-approved things globally.
There already exists some limitations from the FDA regarding software. For example if you receive clearance (NB this is different than approval) for a device which uses AI, it cannot modify its own source code and any changes need to go through the clearance process again. (Or something like that it's been a while since I looked this up.)
I don't know that this is how things are currently structured, but if a company was required to submit a device's source code as a condition of receiving a 510(k) clearance perhaps there should also be a condition that the FDA can release this code in instances where the public interest in doing so would outweigh the IP interests of some piece of abandonware.
Yeah who am I kidding that won't happen.
What are we talking about here? The exoskeleton maker didn’t go into bankruptcy. The exoskeleton is not dependent on cloud services (or at least it is not reported that they would have gone away) and no company acquired anyone.
You are proposing extensive changes, with undeniably serious chance of side effects and your proposal doesn’t even address the issue from the article.
Exactly. The problem here is that the company has set a policy not to support $100,000 medical equipment after 5 years. Mind boggling - imagine if an aircraft manufacturer said the same thing. Using aircraft as an example, they are still in service after 50 years and parts still available for many of them. A similar approach should be taken to equipment like this exoskeleton
Few companies write 100% of the software that runs on their hardware. If some insulin pump uses proprietary firmware licensed from Johnson & Johnson for some part of its operation, does Johnson & Johnson lose its entire firmware licensing business as soon as one customer goes bankrupt? Or are they forced to become a B2C company and manage and sell licenses to millions of people it had no relationship with before? Is it weaponizable: pick a competitor, get them to license some software to a shell company of yours that makes a token device with it, fold the shell company, and now the competitor is required to give away their firmware to the public (and you)?
Have you completely misunderstood the concept here? This isn't some IP virus that infects anyone that touches it. J&J keeps the IP that it owns, in all cases, obviously. The bankrupt company must release the IP that the bankrupt company owns, unless someone like J&J wants to acquire it and keep things running. Obviously a company that fails wouldn't destroy the IP of another company. Obviously the failed company only impacts the failed company IP. I think you may be trying too hard to find flaws in this idea, instead of trying to make it work.
Maybe I have? Could you explain your understanding of it? If it doesn't extend past the software the hardware vendor directly wrote, then it doesn't result in hardware owners being able to continue running the hardware after the manufacturer goes bankrupt, which was the purpose of the proposed "fantasy law".
If closed source solution of bankrupt company used closed source solution of a non-bankrupt company then you just need a new licence. If non-bankrupt company is not issuing new licences then it is not supporting its software -> it needs to open source it. You can apply this rule recursively.
The only problem I see is the licence cost (or should it cost anything for existing licence owners of bankrupt company).
Maybe allow others to replace the firmware with their own?
Exactly. Proprietary software and software patents need to end. In the case of medical devices, such restrictions violate the ADA by blocking access to reasonable accomodations.
>> Proprietary software and software patents need to end.
I'm with you on software patents. On copyright (from which proprietary software is derived) I'm less convinced.
My argument is two-fold;
Firstly, copyright law is the only thing that allows Open Source and Free Software to exist. Copyright is the mechanism that grants an author control of their work, and is the mechanism that forces people building on OSS/Free Software to release code.
You talk about "ending proprietary software", which in turn means effectively removing copyright, since it removes the authors control over their source code.
Secondly, and from a completely different direction, killing proprietary software basically kills all the software people use.
Sure OSS is great at infrastructure. But it has performed poorly in becoming the software people care about. Without proprietary software there's no Chrome, Google Search, Gmail, YouTube, Facebook, Netflix, MS office, Dropbox, AWS, et al.
In infrastructure there's no iOS, Windows, Macs, Google services (aka Android as we know it) etc.
To argue that OSS has clones or replacements of this stuff is o miss the point that proprietary software created these products and markets. And for all the clones that may be out there most have < 10% market share, actually most have < 1% market share, because most clones are either poor refections or simply get their feature list from the proprietary work.
No, ending proprietary software does not end copyright. Even after reading your arguments, I'm not sure how you got to that conclusion.
You argued quite the opposite, in fact, by claiming copyright (and not license terms) ensures open source software.
It is entirely possible to ban proprietary software in cases of human rights and public interest (e.g., open source medical firmware, to use the OP case) while maintaining copyright law even as it exists now.
Case 2 probably ends up being hacked to mine cryptocurrency. If it's a prosthesis, I guess it secretly does delivery runs when you're sleeping. If you (a normal consumer) don't burn out the motor/blow up the battery while messing with it.
There are tradeoffs from supporting-but-not-really-supporting unmaintained products. Also, in this case, it sounds like they were missing hardware that wouldn't have been fixed by publishing the software.
:) that’s a sad but excellent point
Maybe it could be done by considering the technical dependencies as a debt toward customers that should be higher in the debt hierarchy. So if any debtor want the assets of a company, he will have to find a way to manage this sort of "technical/services" debt first.
I don’t fully understand how bankruptcy works but isn’t it just gives whatever you have to creditors? Source code and hardware designs fits into assets. No?
Yes, thats the current law in most places. The op is proposing that not all agreements made by a company should be void on bankruptcy.
Really, there are cases where this is obviously a change that needs to happen. Eg, if a company holds personal data, the agreements that allowed a company to obtain it should live across bankruptcy with the data, not be terminated if it is transferred.
This sort of arrangement is common in real property. For example, if you buy a house where you have to access it via some other private land, the agreement that you can do so is arranged in such a way that it can't be voided when that land is sold, even during bankruptcy. You can't do that for data AFAIK (would love for a lawyer to comment). It needs to be enabled and made mandatory in cases like this.
There is some limited ability to do this: creditors can get a "charge" registered against intellectual property, so theoretically in the OP's case one might be able to design a legal construct that would cause a bankruptcy court to give rights to some special purpose vehicle that is set up (in advance) to represent the patients. But I don't know if that would work in all cases
Not crazy, but the actual issue was due to the FDA.
Please don’t let the following stop your thinking. We need many solutions.
FTA: He said that the company is no longer repairing exoskeletons older than five years because the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates the devices, has approved their usage for that timespan.
Reminds me of oil well remediation
Why do we need bankruptcy? That's way too late.
All owners of hardware should have a licence to inspect and modify the code it runs. Not necessarily open source, just something tied to the hardware itself at a bare minimum.
Nobody would extend credit to software companies if that were the law
Why in the world did the reporters not try to investigate the FDA rules that supposedly prevents this, instead of trying to shame the company? Either the company is wrong, or that's the real story here.
It's hard to track down a vague insinuation of a rule. If the company wants to use it as a defense, I think it's okay to put the burden on them to be specific.
they didn't appear to do that either though - they just uncritically report that it is an FDA rule preventing this company from doing repairs.
Speaking from experience these types of technical details often get cut from news reporting anyways. I wouldn't be surprised if the author of this peice did in fact look that up but it got cut from the final copy.
I think this is likely the relevant regulations: https://24x7mag.com/standards/servicing-legislation/how-the-...
" the FDA believes the following types of activities, in general, involve changes that affect the legally marketed device’s performance or safety specifications and are likely to constitute remanufacturing:
. . .
If the company was no longer maintaining OEM parts for the older model device it might be prevented from using slightly different parts from newer models to repair the older model without basically needing to have the older device + new part be cleared as a completely different medical device. I'm speculating and this might not be entirely accurate.Edit: actually it appears that the company marketing this device did not comply with an FDA order to conduct a postmarket surveilence study to asses its risks.
In September 2015 the "FDA informed ReWalk that its noncompliance with the postmarket surveillance study deadline rendered the device misbranded." This is from a 2020 class action lawsuit against the company which was dismissed but it's not clear to me that the misbranding issue was ever taken care of, which could be the reason the company was initially hesitant to provide service to the device? This is not entirely clear to me one way or the other. https://casetext.com/case/yan-v-rewalk-robotics-ltd-3
I mean, I guess it does make me curious how you should go about regulating a device like this.
Like, if the metal fails and you have a horrible fall and break your hip and shoulder, that's pretty different from an iPhone that won't turn on.
If this is only approved for 5 years, shouldn't the guy be replacing it rather than repairing it? And shouldn't health insurance be covering that, at least beyond the deductible or whatever?
> I mean, I guess it does make me curious how you should go about regulating a device like this.
That's actually my point. There's an interesting policy discussion to be had here, and instead of starting it, they just decided to smear a company.
> Like, if the metal fails and you have a horrible fall and break your hip and shoulder, that's pretty different from an iPhone that won't turn on.
> If this is only approved for 5 years, shouldn't the guy be replacing it rather than repairing it? And shouldn't health insurance be covering that, at least beyond the deductible or whatever?
Probably, but (to throw out a hypothetical alternative) you can also imagine a situation where e.g. inspection can tell him if the whole device actually needs replacement.
I don't have the answer here - I just know I'd like the discussion to revolve around the merits of the situation.
What other $100K products do you throw out after five years? I suppose if the insurance is on the hook, they might require repairability.
How many lightweight hinged products do you have that support your body weight for five years?
[dead]
yeah, it would have been interesting to have seen some deeper digging.
for instance, did the fda simply not renew because the company didn’t try? was this just the company being lazy and attempting to deflect blame onto a spoooooky faceless gov agency? it the company actually gave a good faith attempt, was there some reason the fda said “nope?”
tangential but related, this highlights why we need better funded journalistic institutions rather than lowest tier trash because it’s “free”, journalists need to be able to afford to dig deeper to tell us who is screwing us over in situations like this.
it’s hard for us (society) to advocate for something if we don’t know what the real story is because our investigators (journalists) are hamstrung by lack of funds.
journalist institutions being underfunded only helps crooked governments and crooked company owners keep us in the dark.
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My thoughts exactly. But then again, journalists have long ceased to be investigative or technologically versed.
It's almost like there's no money left in the profession, so there's no more expertise or time available to do proper investigating or writing.
If that were true, the job would be done by someone who took a personal interest in the subject and didn't need to be paid for reporting it. This is the opposite; it's someone doing a bad job because there's money in the profession and they want to get some of it without actually doing the work that would earn it.
Perhaps. Yet more likely that they're pressured into publishing so often they have little time for thorough investigations. If there were more money in it more people could afford to do it full time, and quality could improve.
> job would be done by someone who took a personal interest in the subject and didn't need to be paid for reporting it.
You mean that the job would be done by shills then?
Why would anyone provide free labor otherwise?
Why did you write your comment?
I am not performing a job, if that is what you are implying.
OR it pays near nothing so the bottom of the barrel gets hired at low wage to keep the ghost shipping running
So by that logic, public defenders are your best bet if you get arrested?
As for needing to provide parts into the future, a friend's company does aftermarket service for many expensive pieces of government equipment. Presumably they're able to make what's needed because the government requires it of the original manufacturer.
The government could require that manufacturers either supply replacement parts or specs for someone else to manufacture them. I suppose the latter would be required to avoid gouging. It'd be interesting to think about the secondary effects—if you can't make a lot of money off of service, will you make longer-lasting products and charge appropriately?
Or just get this man a 3d printer so he can make these little parts himself. All he needed was a part that connected the battery to the watch
Right to repair should cover things like putting locks on devices that are illegal to unlock to repair. Making it illegal to do whatever the Frick you want to something you bought. Making it illegal to make parts yourself or have 3rd party companies make a part.
It should not force companies to build parts for you. Forcing people to do work they do not want to is insane. That kind of talk would prevent me from building anything and letting my neighbor borrow it.
And no, saying "it wouldnt apply to you just <insert demographic>" doesn't make me feel any better about that.
> Forcing people to do work they do not want to is insane.
Does "We won't send you this part we already built and currently have in stock, and we won't send you a schematic for it either. You must reverse engineer it and build it yourself if you want to resume being able to walk and control your bowels and bladder" constitute forcing a person to do work they do not want to?
> It should not force companies to build parts for you.
If a company is unable to provide long-term support in the form of replacement parts, then they shouldn't be allowed to sell it to consumers. For decades, and for most devices, it was trivial to find replacement parts and/or swap out identical parts, even if they weren't made by the original manufacturer. You can get replacement parts for cars made in the 90s, 80s, 70s.
It should not be acceptable to buy something as important and life-changing and expensive as this exoskeleton, and the manufacturer just fucks off and provides no way to maintain it long-term.
Freedom doesn't exist. Every corporation is bound by laws and regulations. "Forcing people to do work they do not want to". We aren't talking about regular people like you or me. We're talking about corporations. They're regularly "forced" to do things they don't want to, to the benefit of their customers and society as a whole. You need better arguments if you want to argue against regulating companies.
How long is long term?
Forcing companies to support cutting-edge prototypes (like exoskeleton) for decades is the best way to ensure there won't be any company making them.
If the sales pitch is that a product can help someone with a massive permanent disability, but there's no sort of long-term vision for after-sales service, that seems borderline scammy. You know going in that the customer will need to keep using it, and also that technical products sometimes break down and need repairs.
Was the customer told that the expected lifetime for thos undoubtedly extremely expensive equipment was only five years when he purchased it?
Also, supporting early models for a long time is a great way to learn about the ways that it fails, and fix those failings in future generations. Although, it seems like companies these days don't seem to care at all about the longevity of their products, and that is the real problem.
Except plenty of cutting edge prototypes were made in the past when companies did provide parts
Were the companies required to provide parts for decades by regulation? And the regulation had been there when they were selling the first prototypes?
When the earliest cars/PCs were pushed to the market, did the government tell the manufacturers that they have to provide parts for decades, otherwise they'll be punished in this or that way?
Not a rhetorical questions. I genuinely don't know the answer. But adminttedly I'd be quite surprise if the answer is yes.
Skunkworks airforce projects of old did provide long term support to their customer, even when a lot of their initial prototypes remained just that.
> For decades, and for most devices, it was trivial to find replacement parts and/or swap out identical parts…
This seems like a stretch for anything other than cars, pcs, and large appliances. I doubt this has been true for a long time for anything under $100 and more electrically complicated than a switch and a motor.
So just no exoskeletons ever then.
Aren't automobile manufacturers required to carry and provide stock for cars parts for a certain number of years?
And this is why right to repair laws are a thing.
Also, genuinely I’d be interested in helping this guy hack his exoskeleton to let it work again.
Hang on, what about the part where the FDA only approved the thing for a 5 year use and essentially pushed the manufacturer into liability if they worked on it after that period? Maybe that’s the issue that needs repairing first.
It doesn't sound like a hard and fast rule. It seems like it's whatever the manufacturer asks for in terms of "intended working life." This _seems_ to be the original FDA certification for the device:
https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/cdrh_docs/reviews/den130034.p...
The problem here, of course, is it's not the device itself, but the simple remote control peripheral that is designed to switch device operating modes.
The FDA should force manufacturers of "two piece" systems like this to have backup controls on the device itself and to exclude these non-medical components designed for control from any regulation covering "intended design life."
It seems like a daffy middle ground that the FDA lets exist and manufacturers take advantage of when they can.
> It seems like it's whatever the manufacturer asks for in terms of "intended working life."
I would guess the FDA makes their certification easier or harder to pass based on how long the device is expected to last. If the 5 year lifespan is what hits the middle ground for that company between cost-of-certification and useful-product-life, then it's up to the FDA to make a longer lifespan feasible to get certified.
There is no part two to the certification?
Edit: Seems odd that the loophole is big enough to allow not even uploading the full documentation.
Your point is valid, and is improved when we recognize it's not an either/or blame game when acknowledging the parts of the system that need improvement for failures like this person experienced.
Or, you know, the company works with both the FDA and the customer to iron out this legal wrinkle instead of taking a zero-sum approach.
But he did have the right to repair... right? He just couldn't get the part. The article title is misleading. They don't support old medical devices, they were following the rules. Yes, they should have handled the customer service better. Escalated it. But it doesn't sound like some big evil company locking people out of their legs because they tinkered with them. Let's not lump it all in the same category.
Also, this line is beyond ridiculous:
"Straight’s path to paralysis started in the 1990s at the Saratoga Race Course".
My understanding of the issue was that he did not know what the part was. It was a connector and there is dozens if not hundreds different families of them. So very likely with suitable bill of materials which right to repair would have provided it could have been found ordered and replaced by third-party.
> "Straight’s path to paralysis started in the 1990s at the Saratoga Race Course".
why is that ridiculous? seems tragic to me; not to mention the horse broke his neck as well.
That depends on how exactly a right to repair law is going to regulate things. Will a company have to provide parts for older models forever? Because in the article it says that he was going to fix it himself but couldn't find the part that connects the battery to his controller watch.
Not sure about the US but in some countries this is regulated for cars. Companies are required to provide parts for a certain amount of years after discontinuation of the product.
It seems abundantly reasonable that a similar requirement be imposed for prosthesis. And it would also be very reasonable for the required period to be longer than that of cars.
So yeah, not forever, but definitely not a a short period either.
> Not sure about the US
I think this was something that used to be regulated but is not now. There's plenty of financial justification for supporting cars 10 or more years by making parts, since most last longer than that. For niche products that are practically one-offs, I can see where it might need to be regulated because the economics won't encourage it.
I had to buy a mirror for my 23 year old car on eBay. There ought to be a law /s
The local AutoZone stocks mirrors for my 22 year old Oldsmobile.
I don't know if there's a law.
They shouldn't be making such unnecessary proprietary components. For cases where there really is no way around using custom hardware, at end of life the specifications should be made public so that a third party can manufacture them.
In this specific case, the real issue is just the incredibly short service lifetime. While different medical devices are going to have different lifetimes, manufacturers need to continue to provide support for at least 36 months after reporting that they plan to discontinue support, which is 60% of the lifetime of this product. Typically medical devices are supported for much longer.
To play devil's advocate:
> They shouldn't be making such unnecessary proprietary components.
Perhaps not, but that's not right to repair. Pretty much everything in any modern smartphone is completely proprietary.
And as the article said, the battery wasn't proprietary. The missing part was the battery connector. That doesn't even suggest to me that it's wildly proprietary, just that it can't be found anymore. Lots of components that are easily sourced now would be challenging for an ordinary person to source in a decade.
> at end of life the specifications should be made public so that a third party can manufacture them.
This also isn't right to repair. In fact, it probably doesn't help much at all: a sufficiently specialized part on a specialized medical device is going to be so niche that the cost of an aftermarket part will be huge. There's probably what, twenty of these things in the wild? A hundred? How many aftermarket manufacturers will even pick up the phone for a one-off custom part, spec or no?
> manufacturers need to continue to provide support for at least 36 months after reporting that they plan to discontinue support, which is 60% of the lifetime of this product
The device was supported for the regulatory limit of five years, and the owner has been using it for ten. Assuming they did give three years of support after discontinuing the product, it's now two years beyond that.
For a product only approved to be sold for five years by a regulator, I think the fact that the only piece that couldn't be serviced after double that time is a battery connector is pretty impressive (all things considered). Customer service aside, I'm not sure how much more you could possibly ask from this company.
> How many aftermarket manufacturers will even pick up the phone for a one-off custom part, spec or no?
If you offered 1% of the entire device's replacement price, for a part that the average tinkerer could build, I think you'd find a stampede of competent offers. I'm sure much lower amounts would work too.
If you're paying $1000 for every part on a $100,000 exoskeleton, there might be folks lining up, but that's terrible for the consumer.
The point is there's a price where you could get the parts made, and that price is much much lower than a new model. A thousand dollars every few years is something that could go in a budget.
Don't focus too much on the exact number I used, I went on the high end just to make a point, also it's supposed to be a per-major-fix price not a per-part price.
A thousand dollars for a part worth ones of dollars will simply never be the better alternative, sorry
The better alternative to what?
I was describing an alternative to manufacturers not picking up the phone. I think what I described is better than simply being screwed.
It's a terrible solution because it sets a price floor that makes it impossible for people to afford repairs. You need a $10 battery connector? 1% of 100k.
It's a vulnerable population who needs these parts. Probably lots of folks who can't work. Medicaid caps the amount of money you can have in an account at $8000 max. Pricing parts this way will push people into abject poverty out of desperation.
How about making parts for all medical devices something that must be covered by healthcare? Or, and this one is a crazy one, provide universal coverage so you can just get a new device at a reasonable price that's negotiated by the government?
Again, I was only comparing to your scenario of manufacturers not picking up the phone.
It was not a general-purpose suggestion, it was a weak proposition on purpose for the sake of simplicity.
Please stop treating it as a suggestion of what should happen. That post only exists to counter a specific sentence, it does not exist beyond that scenario.
Analogy: If I say a punch in the gut is more realistic than getting shot, I am not advocating for punches in the gut, and you don't need to tell me about better alternatives to punches in the gut.
> How many aftermarket manufacturers will even pick up the phone for a one-off custom part, spec or no?
That would depend entirely upon the part.
With (detailed) specs being available, quite a lot of skilled repair techs would be able to bodge something competent together (!) to meet those specs.
Re-manufacturing completely 100% good parts could be a thing sure, for sufficient volumes.
But real world situations for low volumes tend to be "lets get it working well enough using the tools we have available". Creativity is required. ;)
The results for those situations are improved dramatically if there's detailed, good quality docs easily accessible to the people working on it.
> Perhaps not, but that's not right to repair. Pretty much everything in any modern smartphone is completely proprietary.
That's exactly what right to repair refers to! Companies can't stop you from taking a screwdriver to an object in your possession, the issue is that by using non-standard components they make what should be an easy repair extremely difficult if not impossible without going through them, allowing them to effectively prevent repair. Smartphones are the poster child for lack of right to repair.
> That doesn't even suggest to me that it's wildly proprietary, just that it can't be found anymore.
If it wasn't proprietary, it would be able to be found. Off the shelf battery connectors are produced in the millions and remain available for decades. The whole reason for this issue was that instead of using one of those, they went with something non-standard that a person couldn't get, and despite having them on hand they wouldn't give one to the user.
> This also isn't right to repair.
Again, it is.
> In fact, it probably doesn't help much at all: a sufficiently specialized part on a specialized medical device is going to be so niche that the cost of an aftermarket part will be huge.
So long as the cost of replacing the part is less than the cost of replacing the entire system that depends on that part, it still makes sense. Aftermarket manufacturers specialize in making such one offs.
> The device was supported for the regulatory limit of five years, and the owner has been using it for ten.
The FDA doesn't have regulatory limits for how long products can be supported, it sets minimums for how long products need to be supported. The company chose to drop support after 5 years, it was not barred from providing support afterwards. If you read the article, the company both did provide the support requested and issued an apology for not doing so sooner.
> Assuming they did give three years of support after discontinuing the product, it's now two years beyond that.
Part of that end of life process is notifying operators of the devices that support will be ending, giving them time to get spare parts as needed. There is no indication that this was done.
> For a product only approved to be sold for five years by a regulator,
Again, not what happened.
> I think the fact that the only piece that couldn't be serviced after double that time is a battery connector is pretty impressive
There is no indication that any other part has been successfully serviced in that time period. The battery connector was the part that happened to fail, and when it did bricked the system. Other parts may have failed in a way that didn't render the system inoperable, and other critical components may have yet to fail.
> I'm not sure how much more you could possibly ask from this company.
Designing products to utilize source-able components and making specifications for custom components available after you stop manufacturing them are two things that can be asked of any company. It costs essentially nothing to do either. It even benefits the company to do so - using standard components reduces production costs and decreases supply chain risk, while publishing part specs allows a company to offload continuing support costs onto third parties.
I'm not going to read or respond to most of what you wrote because frankly I don't care to because a lot of it is nonsense (a real example: I'm not going to repair my $600 washer when the part I need costs $500), but I'll respond to this:
> Companies can't stop you from taking a screwdriver to an object in your possession, the issue is that by using non-standard components they make what should be an easy repair extremely difficult if not impossible without going through them, allowing them to effectively prevent repair. Smartphones are the poster child for lack of right to repair.
This is objectively wrong. You can't repair your own phone without voiding the warranty. Which is to say, you don't have the legal right to repair your own phone, even if you sourced compatible parts.
The right to repair is the right to repair your device on your own terms, and for other companies to be able to offer compatible parts. An iPhone screen that comes with DRM makes it impossible to do that. Licensing rules that prevent companies from offering service for devices (e.g., screen repair) makes it impossible to do that. Having a tricky PCB doesn't impede your rights.
The existence of proprietary parts doesn't in any way invalidate your right to repair unless those parts are specifically designed to make it physically impossible to repair your device. Hell, even the most technically complicated parts in popular consumer devices can be replicated by third parties and have been for years, but selling those parts is often illegal and the devices are designed to detect and reject those parts.
> You can't repair your own phone without voiding the warranty. Which is to say, you don't have the legal right to repair your own phone, even if you sourced compatible parts.
You have the legal right to void your warranty. You warranty likely voids itself in a reasonably short period of time regardless of whether you conduct repairs, and it would be absurd for the seller to offer a warranty that covers objects that have been arbitrarily tampered with. That's emphatically NOT what right to repair refers to.
> The right to repair is the right to repair your device on your own terms, and for other companies to be able to offer compatible parts.
Yes, this is the correct definition, and the one I have been using in this thread, and the one that mandates making replacement parts reasonably available.
> An iPhone screen that comes with DRM makes it impossible to do that. Licensing rules that prevent companies from offering service for devices (e.g., screen repair) makes it impossible to do that. Having a tricky PCB doesn't impede your rights.
Yes, these are all right to repair issues caused by the over-use of proprietary components.
> The existence of proprietary parts doesn't in any way invalidate your right to repair unless those parts are specifically designed to make it physically impossible to repair your device. Hell, even the most technically complicated parts in popular consumer devices can be replicated by third parties and have been for years, but selling those parts is often illegal and the devices are designed to detect and reject those parts.
I don't think you know what the word proprietary means. You are complaining about the use of proprietary components.
Isn't five years longer than 36 months?
36 months is 60% of five years.
> And this is why right to repair laws are a thing.
Yes, and also why products should be open sourced and documented when they're declared obsolete by their manufacturer, or the manufacturer cease operations. Let people be responsible for all repairs they do to their devices; this man would probably not give a damn about regulations if the alternative was essentially to become paralyzed again.
He's not being blocked from repairing it, and he doesn't need to hack it.
He just needs a part. (They did eventually send it to him.) If they had not, he doesn't need the right to repair it, rather would need someone to manufacture the part.
>He just needs a part.
Right to repair, in a broad sense, also covers access to parts. This is definitely an edge case and we might want to just consider that if we're going to do experiments on disabled with the aim of helping them, and they want to continue using the tools, we might have to subsidize access to the parts until they die.
I don’t think it’s an edge case at all. Right to repair doesn’t require a manufacturer to continue making parts or spend their own money on creating a large inventory of them. It’s one thing to require Apple to sell you a phone screen they are still making, it’s another to require them to be able to sell any number of them at any time from ones they do not.
Right to repair is a negative right. There’s no reason to turn it into a positive one.
It's an edge case because the supply is so small and the hardware is so specialized. If this were an iPhone screen there's be a dozen companies in china capable of producing and selling them near cost if apple didn't interfere, and we'd have plenty of people willing to repair and resell the screens if apple would stop abusing US customs to seize repaired screens as they've done in the past.
The point still stands, no ‘right to repair’ can force manufacturers to stock X number of parts, or spin up production lines again, at some future date. Regardless of the company’s condition.
Even the pentagon can’t force that, they just pay a large amount of money to a new company to recreate the original part to the exact same spec.
Theoretically it’s possible to enact new legislation to mandate that something sufficient must be set aside in some sort of escrow system, and punish companies for not doing so, but that would probably result in most manufacturing companies fleeing the US….
I mean this particular one may be an edge case but you probably just described half the products people would want to repair.
And the real meat of the comment is the part about forcing companies to make and sell things.
I agree with that, and it's possible that half of what people buy and want to repair aren't going to be repairable under market conditions. Probably more; most of these cases it's just economically infeasible to repair anything that isn't new or produced recently, with supply lines still active, and it's fine when nobody wants to pay for it.
So for my definition, what makes this an edge case is specifically it's expensive medical equipment that a disabled user can't pay to acquire a part for, and companies aren't willing to produce anyway because it's so niche. 99% of equipment probably falls under "I want to repair it and someone (myself or a repair company) wants to fix it" or "I don't want to repair it because it's so expensive". The rest would be the edge case where you want to repair it and you literally can't afford to - even if you could produce the parts.
By the way, I hate this article, I just want the information and not have to parse an entire goddamn magazine to get to it.
Yeah it is overly-literary. Writers sometimes just like to put words in things.
But is a compelling reason to have solid right to repair laws.
One could imagine a solid industry of 3rd party parts providers if devices are built under a right to repair framework
Once again, that thing falls under FDA regulations. You’re telling us about a world with 3rd party mix and match components, all FDA approved in any and all combinations on 5 year plus old devices?
> under FDA regulations.
That's just (!) under current FDA regulations though yeah?
It's not like they're forever unchangeable.
I'm supportive of the right to repair in every sense, but even the strongest right to repair laws would not have helped improve the outcome in this case.
The strongest right to repair law would probably require detailed schematics, BOMs, and (sufficiently detailed) manufacturing steps being available for all the parts.
That would enable people to organise getting replacements manufactured themselves. :)
I love that future, but that's not right to repair. It's simply not what that means. You can want open source manufacturing, and you can want that legally mandated, but not having manufacturing steps doesn't take away your right to repair something you own.
Is there any evidence that was the bottleneck?
Bit early to be looking for bottlenecks... ;)
Honestly, this world be great lol. The cost and complexity of manufacturing would maintain a moat for the companies.
At the very least, they could license the schematic to customers.
Given the mechanical complexity of such devices. Would it ever be profitable to continue producing parts for them?
Unless the company has stagnated, the tech and parts would improve overtime where they no longer match.
But also, would you want a third party to continue producing the parts? Seems like a security leak there.
> Given the mechanical complexity of such devices. Would it ever be profitable to continue producing parts for them?
For most repair parts, no. Especially not since need for such a device is anticorrelated with earnings. The article's complainant, being a disabled former jockey, probably make <40K in the years leading up to his accident and little to none in the years since.
For anyone curious, the older models cost between $69,500 - $85,000.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReWalk
Now they seemingly cost $100k+
> Medicare said it would start paying for 80 percent of exoskeletons, which at Lifeward cost about $100,000.
> And although that coverage doesn’t extend to paraplegics who have injuries to their spine as high up as Straight
Oh man, i feel for everyone who live in the USA and require any sort of medical help. Either you spend all your hard earned money or you got to get in a though fight with the medical administration.
While the US healthcare system does suck in numerous ways, is this kind of thing even available elsewhere, via socialized medicine? (Maybe the answer is yes, which would be great!)
Yes it does.
https://www.francetvinfo.fr/sante/politique-de-sante/sante-l...
Oftentimes the big issues with the development of new Medical Devices are pre/post market studies and data collection for those studies. The regulatory path for this ends up quite complicated & contradictory when juggled with HIPPA, GDPR and the various rules around how these studies are executed. This means there is a lot of tricky nuance to what markets a Medical Device company might try to target.
While I certainly wouldn't call myself an expert on this, having worked within the industry I've been able to make the following observations:
- Novel medical devices are often created by very small startups, who in essence exist solely to create a PoC. A larger Medical Device company then buys them to actually start walking through the regulatory hurdles which will bring them to market.
- The market it gets initially released in is rarely connected to the location it was invented (ex: Invented by European startup but released in the US is weirdly common). But if a product is successful enough then an even larger Medical device company with access to more international markets might swoop in and purchase the mid sized company.
- European regulatory agencies will oftentimes be lenient on products that have received FDA approval, but the reverse is less clear cut. So going through the FDA first can be more efficient, especially when considering the market size of the US along with the fact that you only need to support one language. In practice this pushes out the timeline for the first European release of a device.
- GDPR is actually not very different from HIPPA, perhaps not even as strict, but it is more ambiguous and that's a problem. The key difference is that, right now, everyone knows exactly how to follow HIPPA but the reverse is not true for GDPR. Some things that might be allowed by one might subtly contradict the other and there is no third party Medical Device companies can throw money at that will absorb the liability of this by saying whether or not they are GDPR compliant.
- Since Medical Device companies live & die on their study data, this data collection paradox has further pushed out timelines for when medical devices are first released in Europe.
- A European might see a cool new Medical device from a startup in their local newspaper but then never actually gain access to it for another 20 years.
So personally I'd say it largely reduces down to the regulatory environment + market size. The US can be among the strictest, but not only is getting past that worth it for market access, but by passing those strict hurdles, releasing to other international markets becomes much easier since you got the hard part over with.
Not to mention the fact that, in a similar way a popular programming language might have more "community resources" and a larger hiring pool, the same could also be said for navigating regulatory environments. So popularity has a self-amplifying effect.
> you got to get in a though fight with the medical administration.
This is the only option in other countries with gov provided healthcare.
Oh no. You get what is owed to you very easily and very quickly, whatever how much it cost.
I've got relatives who got cancer medication just like that, appointment to the doctor, go to pharmacy and pay nothing at all. In a day he got it.
No, not when it comes to stuff deemed “unnecessary” for improvements to life like this.
Well it is in France and we definitely got social healthcare.
https://www.francetvinfo.fr/sante/politique-de-sante/sante-l...
The manufacturer wants them to "upgrade" to a new model. It's not like the eye implant where the vendor exited the industry.
It's related, though. This is incredibly valuable, incredibly expensive equipment turning to e-waste.
If I'm understanding correctly, would the maker accept to repair the structure will be breaking the law. In this case is understandable. The only thing worst than being paralyzed is being paralyzed while burnt alive by charging a broken battery too old. At some point the risk is just too high for the maker.
Maybe those devices should be just leased for a month fee, so the company is supported and can keep the lights on. Insurance and government could support the man paying a part of the bill.
From the article and the remedy the CEO provided, it seems to be that working on the device themselves would open the manufacturer to liabilities or breaking regulations imposed FDA regulation. The CEO shipped the dude a replacement part so that they could carry out the repair themselves.
I don't see where they'd be breaking the law.
> He said that the company is no longer repairing exoskeletons older than five years because the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates the devices, has approved their usage for that timespan.
So in the end it was a mix of bad company actions and regulations that made this repair a struggle for him.
I heard from a mobility scooter technician that there is barely any second market for the as typically the health insurance will get you a new one every few years. So similar to the companies response to just buy the newest model.
> was a mix of bad company actions and regulations
We actually don’t know the second part. What we know is that the company claimed that regulations were involved. Might or might not be true.
Wouldn’t be the first time when a company didn’t want to do something for financial reasons and they decided to read the regulations in a way which made them more money.
I'm curious as to why we can't have a similar structure for medical devices that we have for military equipment.
Essentially that the government would put out contracts based on studies that have been extensively peer reviewed.
People/hospitals then can buy them as needed.
I wonder if he posted the part on Reddit they could have helped him
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In other news Microsoft abandoned the surface duo after 1 yearly android update. If you don't control the software you don't really own the device, whether it be a phone or an exoskeleton.
He needed a battery and a battery connector, I doubt his exoskeleton was even connected to the Internet.