Nest Reminds Customers That Ownership Isn't What It Used to Be
&gt; It used to be that when you bought an appliance, you owned it, and you could take it apart, repair it, and plug in whatever accessories you wanted without the manufacturer&#x27;s knowledge or permission.<p>That&#x27;s some glorious equivocation the EFF is pulling here.<p>You can still do this today. Nothing stops you from taking apart, repairing and tweaking devices you buy.<p>What you can&#x27;t get today and that you could never, ever get before either, is the guarantee that the company you bought that device from will keep its servers alive for any given period of time.<p>Anyone who thinks that open source is the way out of this dilemma needs a reality check.<p>The fact that the source is open gives you exactly zero guarantees that a company will keep paying for servers that runs this code. Zero. If you&#x27;re lucky, someone will pick that source up and deploy servers to run it, but again, no guarantees.<p>&gt; Customers likely didn&#x27;t expect that, 18 months after the last Revolv Hubs were sold, instead of getting more upgrades, the device would be intentionally, permanently, and completely disabled.<p>Then they were naïve customers. If the terms of service don&#x27;t include such a guarantee, then you don&#x27;t have it, period. It doesn&#x27;t matter if the source is open or closed or if the company that provides the device is worth billions or just an angel funded startup.<p>&gt; In an ideal world, Hub owners would be free to point their devices at a different central server, run by a third-party competitor or a trusted friend,<p>They can do this today, the world doesn&#x27;t need to be &quot;ideal&quot;, there just needs to be a financial incentive for a company to run such software. That&#x27;s what happens in a free trade economy, supply and demand rule. This economy gives us a lot of benefits but you need to be ready to face the reality that sometimes, it won&#x27;t give you what you want.<p>&gt; But there&#x27;s another way to push back against untrustworthy devices, and that&#x27;s refusing to buy electronics and software that prioritize the manufacturer&#x27;s wishes above your own.<p>What a great idea. Now, can you give a few examples of alternate devices that give us the kind of guarantee you are advocating?<p>I would certainly love to hear about them.<p>Sometimes, I wonder if the EFF lives on the same planet I live on.