discontinuing support is in fact breaking it, especially when (as the original post describes) the company deliberately architects things so that they cannot be maintained and arbitrarily cuts support.
On the contrary, the post is describing how they’re maintaining the equipment beyond it’s service life - it’s not broken.
Second […]
There’s no indication that the company that manufactured the microscopes does not offer support? Maybe the guy’s lab just doesn’t want to pay for it.
I make no claims about the moral intent of capitalism
You literally said that discontinuing support is unethical.
I’d say evidence is to the contrary. The internet, for example, is essentially a socialist or even communist endeavour
If you think the last 30 years of internet tech is non-capitalist I don’t know what to say to you.
[…] I’d love to contribute, but in my regular capitalist job […]
Sorry mate, you’ve kind of ranted yourself onto a tangent here.
I’m not advocating capitalism, I’m merely saying that there are reasons why things are the way that they are that commenters here seem unable to consider.
Lemmy has of course inherited reddit’s hatred of corporate profiteering. Of course we should be wary of companies pursuing profit to the detriment of the societies they function within, but that doesn’t mean that all company’s are engaging in greedy profiteering nor that all corporate behavior is an example of greedy profiteering.
I also made the incendiary claim that no one here would open source the software client for the microscope at EoL. I stand by that.
The model in question is the only one we have for oligopolies producing specialist equipment. There are few buyers, few producers, and the R&D costs are high in comparisson to volume sold.
Many commenters are making the absurd and unsupported claim that open sourcing software for older models is somehow “good customer service” that will inspire future sales. IMO this type of claim is the height of arrogance, as though any commenter here has more data and more experience than the management of these companies. As though no one at any of these companies has ever considered that open sourcing their client software might boost future sales. Of course they have considered it, and based on the market research and financial models that they have access to and we do not, they have concluded that whatever they’re doing right now is the best way forward.
As always in this kind of banter, commenters are looking for lazy generalisations on which to base their reasoning. Companies are greedy and bad. Open Source and Socialism is Good. There is always nuance that explains why things are the way they are. Sometimes corporate behavior is the result of excessive greed, but more often there are reasonable explanations.
I’m saying that you can’t legislate that abandoned software must become public domain. If you asked a company whether it was abandoned they would just say yes it’s still supported, with a completely impractical price tag for support.
It is sociality absolutely equivalent to software.
We’re not talking about software, the microscope is a product involving research and development, a team of engineers, a production facility, and accompanying software. To say “this software should be open source” is to disregard the product that it’s a part of.
I’m not trying to be condescending but the investment required to produce specialised lab equipment is several orders of magnitude greater than that required to author a book.
And, yeah, actually, giving away free copies is absolutely denying a future sale of that publication.
No it’s not because of the people you give free copies, only an infinitessimal minority would actually buy one. Plus every copy you give away promotes additional sales. Also, IDK anything about you so I don’t intend this to be as condescending as it sounds - but it’s very common to buy a run of 10,000 books just to call yourself a best selling author. Giving away books is pretty meaningless I’m sorry.
If you don’t want to believe any of us, that’s on you, but calling that many people liars tends to be dumber than dammit if you don’t have a good reason to do so.
I do have some specialist knowledge in this area. I advise people on strategic business decisions in the course of my work. I don’t care very much whether you believe me or think I’m dumber than damnit but it’s safe to say that few commenters here have a better understanding of people’s behavior with business & profit decisions than I do.
I absolutely would at least open source any deprecated software like the post is discussing
Then you couldn’t run a viable company in an oligopoly. It’s a mistake to think of this as deprecated software. It’s a component of an earlier product. Microsoft isn’t going to opensource windows 10 just because windows 11 has been released.
That’s my principle, I fully support the right to repair.
No one is impeding the right to repair. Old mate is repairing the computers that run windows 95.
Maybe you don’t think that way. Maybe you want to maximize profits over any other concern.
I don’t think it’s really fair to make assumptions about my character just because I pointed out an alternative perspective that seems completely lost in these threads.
Frankly, assuming that every company you interact with are greedy fat cats is very lazy thinking.
For all you know the producers of this expensive lab equipment are using sales to labs in wealthy research labs to subsidise free microscopes for tertiary institutions in developing nations.
Unfortunately it seems like all you have is a right to repair hammer and you’re trying to hit everything with it even in cases where it doesn’t apply.
This comment is based on the assumption that the company manufacturing the lab equipment is enjoying unreasonable profits, which is not necessarily the case.
You can’t force companies to support software. They will just attach an impractical though reasonable price tag to continued support. “Sure we can support that microscope, it will cost you 2x the price of our new model”.
This would force companies to continuously improve
On the contrary, there’s no money to invest in development of newer models if no one will buy them.
If you force a company to continue support they will just give it a stupid price tag. “Sure we will continue to support this $250k microscope, if you would like us to write a windows 11 client for you that will cost $1m.”
Perhaps under some kind of “intuitive ethics”. From a consequentialist perspective this model provides more R & D funding for better microscopes and is therefore the morally right action. A utilitarianist would argue that the greater public benefits from more highly developed microscopes while only the owner of the microscope benefits from opensource software.
your company breaking it
Discontinuing support is not “breaking it”. As in the OP, the owner of the microscope is still using it - it’s their responsibility support continued use, not the manufacturer.
Profit must always go up
This is a redditism and only really true of venture capital funded corporations, primarily info tech. Almost guaranteed that a microscope manufacturing company is owned by a university and as such self-sustaining profit is perfectly adequate.
our brains are so broken by this.
This is hyperbole but suppose you’re really just saying that we’re accustomed to thinking about things in a certain way. I would argue that most commenters are indeed used to thinking about things in a capitalism = evil kind of way. Certainly there are grave shortcomings of capitalism, but it is not completely without virtue. Funding for research is extraordinarily difficult under socialism for example. The inherent sink or swim mandate of capitalism ensures productive research. There’s an argument to be made that while the capitalist approach seems wasteful because the microscope becomes superseded, a socialist approach would also be wasteful because there’s no motivation for efficient research and development.
Of course you’re going to buy the one where “you’re sol after it’s service life” because that’s the one who’s manufacturer has been able to afford to invest in any R & D.
All things being equal, if there’s a company who’s model is some kind of eternal service life and another with a limited service life obviously the latter will be a better product.
Most commenters here are talking about a lab budget in the same way you’d manage household finance in some kind of “buy it for life” philosophy which is just not how org budgets work. Managers don’t work on a life long time scale, they want the best results from projects with limited scope. You buy the best microscope that you can afford, not the one which is going to have continued support 20 years after you’ve left the org.
Oh wait, they’re doing everything in their power to prevent me from being independent after the purchase
They’re not, actually. This may be subtle nuance but they’re not actively preventing you from doing whatever you want, they’re just not assisting you to undermine their IP.
As I said, this business model is built around products having a finite service life. This microscope may have been state of the art 30 years ago, but all the R & D that’s taken place in the interim is funded by the sale of new microscopes.