Some ideas I had for what a regulator can do to protect our consumer rights (including right to repair) on the software tech side:
- All devices should come with unlocked bootloader. No exceptions.
- OS updates should be mandated for a certain period. Especially security updates.
- Standardisation: An open standard API for device drivers should be mandated for the hardware components used so that system developers can easily create support for any OS, and don't need to resort to reverse engineering.
- Copyright restrictions on software code should be valid only for a certain period and become public domain (open source) after that. (It should definitely not be 75+ years of copyright that is currently mandated for films and books).
> All devices should come with unlocked bootloader. No exceptions.
Agree, but I would say it differently : users ought to be able to push their own keys while keeping the "secure boot" feature. e.g. "fastboot key push <key>"...
> An open standard API for device drivers should be mandated
Agreed on all your points, especially the last -- only I'd include a shorter patent term as well. If the phone is going to have an artificially limited life of 3 years, the 3 year term for both copyright and patent on its constituent parts (software and hardware) is more than reasonable: especially given that the whole purpose of copyright and patent is to build up the public domain commons for society's benefit.
- All devices should come with unlocked bootloader. No exceptions.
- OS updates should be mandated for a certain period. Especially security updates.
- Standardisation: An open standard API for device drivers should be mandated for the hardware components used so that system developers can easily create support for any OS, and don't need to resort to reverse engineering.
- Copyright restrictions on software code should be valid only for a certain period and become public domain (open source) after that. (It should definitely not be 75+ years of copyright that is currently mandated for films and books).