this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2025
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It's a thermostat, my parents still have one of those goldtone Honeywell ones with a dial from like the 1960's. The only reason the app won't work is because they can't be bothered to support it. Stop making things obsolescent, make it mandatory that all this crap has a set support time after which it must be open sourced.
Agreed. If copyrights expire, then why not for proprietary software, especially when it's no longer supported?
No, it's a computer that runs a thermostat.
And you generally don't allow devices that aren't receiving security updates to continue accessing servers.
I do agree with making them open source it, though.
But they also aren't bricking the devices. They still work as thermostats.
So fucking what? Stop repeating this shitty, weak argument over and over again.
There is absolutely no logical reason why they can't continue to support it, no matter how old it gets. A 20-year-old computer can run modern Linux just fine with security updates, why can't a 12-year-old thermostat that is also running on a heavily modified Linux?
Because you have to pay developers to maintain it. Developers are expensive. At some point it doesn't make sense to keep doing that, so products are end of lifed.
You're more than welcome to attempt to flash a custom firmware on it, though. I'm sure there are devs working on it.
Also, that 20 year old computer is running a general purpose OS that is designed to work on just about any system. The OS on a smart device, especially one from 2014, is heavily customized