[pdkl95]

The solution to this type of intentionally incompatible product is to return to a legal and cultural environment that respects adversarial interoperability[1]. If a company doesn't want to implement the features people want[2], some other company should be able to provide their own (possibly reverse engineered) implementation.

Trying to restrict competitors from making interoperable products is admitting you don't want to participate in a well-running competitive market and instead deserve monopoly power.

[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interopera...

[2] including features like interoperability with a competitor's product.

[maxerickson]

There isn't necessarily a limitation on reverse engineering, they just can't use the information they had under contract anymore.

Weak sauce that they didn't attach the licensing to the devices though.

[bradfa]

It was kind of a brilliant move by Shimano, in retrospect. Since Shimano did share with them how to do everything, it makes it much harder to now go and implement those features after the contract has been invalidated.

Seems like a good time for SRAM to realize they should open up info on how to let others create apps for the Hammerhead devices to let indy devs figure out how to reverse engineer Shimano's system.

[staticautomatic]

This is kind of what RAND licensing frameworks are for.

[hprotagonist]

there’s a certain irony in proposing this as regards bicycle components, specifically.

[arbitrage]

not sure i see where the irony is. can you clarify?

[hprotagonist]

shimano, sram, and campagnolo have been engaged in a passive aggressive war of cross-compatibility degradation for about 40 years.

[chromanoid]

This is to some extent even already the case through GDPR in Europe.

I wonder if GDPR is applicable to realtime Di2 data that is not shared with a third party. See also https://medicaldeviceslegal.com/2016/12/19/privacy-by-design...