As a general rule, if you buy “smart” anything where it requires an internet connection and a cloud service to function it will be bitrotten within 5 years and dead within 10. And that’s assuming the company survives that long and is bothered to support it. That’s from planned obsolescence and the ongoing cost of supporting the platform when they have something new to sell. And while some things benefit from an internet connection, if its white goods or whatever where functionality is locked into an account, an app and the cloud, then run a mile.
I think forward thinking companies could actually gain a lot of free publicity and sales if they openly pledged that their softwarewas in escrow and would automatically release after a period of time and/or as a failsafe if the company discontinued the product and/or they went bust.
It should be required that companies either maintain their services perpetual or release the software with a permissive license to allow users to maintain their own service.
As a general rule, if you buy “smart” anything where it requires an internet connection and a cloud service to function it will be bitrotten within 5 years and dead within 10. And that’s assuming the company survives that long and is bothered to support it. That’s from planned obsolescence and the ongoing cost of supporting the platform when they have something new to sell. And while some things benefit from an internet connection, if its white goods or whatever where functionality is locked into an account, an app and the cloud, then run a mile.
I think forward thinking companies could actually gain a lot of free publicity and sales if they openly pledged that their softwarewas in escrow and would automatically release after a period of time and/or as a failsafe if the company discontinued the product and/or they went bust.
It should be required that companies either maintain their services perpetual or release the software with a permissive license to allow users to maintain their own service.
Worse, it could get bought out and converted to a Meta, Google, or Amazon product.