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by discreteevent 1482 days ago
It's not that they want to control the person. They want to control what is sent to the competitor. There's a phrase "good fences make good neighbours". This is the history of industrial competition and cooperation. So we want to have cooperation and sharing which is what advances prosperity for everyone. But as soon as you share stuff people can abuse it. We see this with social network data. We see this with AWS abuse of open source. The practical way to have cooperation is to have sharing over which you have some control otherwise people will stop cooperating. So Shimano need some way of saying: We want to share this data with the user and with third party software companies. But we do not want to share this data with a competitor. At the moment there is no way to do this so they just do not share at all (or at least not with that "third party" software company). Shimano probably want to cooperate but they also want to be able to compete fairly. Right now it's not fair competition because SRAM are not sharing SRAM aggregate data with Shimano.
3 comments

> It's not that they want to control the person. They want to control what is sent to the competitor.

Distinction without a difference. Shimano is using technical and legal means to prevent owners of their devices from using their property as they wish. And we have bought into the confusion that just because someone manufactured an item, they have some sort of legitimate claim to how it is used even after they sell it.

> There's a phrase "good fences make good neighbours".

I couldn't agree more. Which is why it angers me that Shimano is moving its fence, expanding into consumer's back yards. I don't want every company that sells me something to then try and control how I use that something.

They are attempting to control their customers.

When someone says you’re free to do whatever you wish so long as they allow it, we’ll then you aren’t free at all.

What’s next? Do you look forward to a future where a Mercedes will actively forbid you to drive to a Tesla shop?

> So Shimano need some way of saying: We want to share this data with the user and with third party software companies. But we do not want to share this data with a competitor.

The bike is mine, the components are mine- I bought them, why does shimano need any way of saying where I can put my data produced by my devices?

What's next, is a fridge company going go turn off the fridge if I pup non-approved food in it, will an oven refuse to heat an unauthorised meal? Is a smart lock going to refuse to open the door if I bring in more people than my rental contract allows?

We are on a high-way to a feudal kindom and tyranny.