[justinclift]

The open software / standards would need to cover every aspect of a given product, such that external people / enthusiasts / (etc) would be able to generate fixed firmware and upload it after the manufacturer ends support.

That might work for _some_ devices with extremely large user bases.

Devices with specialist properties or a low number of users sound like they'd be very tricky to have that approach work reliably.

That being said, if there's wide adoption of "known good" base level firmware (eg powering on, init device capabilities) then maybe the specialist stuff could be add on's or something. eg modularising things might be a way to get closer to the goal