[nwellinghoff]

These printer companies could also open source their drivers after a number of years. The amount of landfill printers due to driver support is kinda sad. Just tossed my old cannon that had a perfectly good scanner due to driver support and the “need” for ink for the scanner to work. Booo!

[paulmd]

100%. Require that software be released at the end of the support lifecycle for all licensed customers to continue their use-case, and watch support lifecycles magically telescope outwards.

It would require modification to copyright law in certain aspects (requiring “pass-through licensing” so to speak) and there’s utterly no will to tackle this in the US.

But those sorts of issues are already problematic for, eg, music licensing for games/shows/etc. Some of these types of hyper-limited, time-gated, non-product-ownership-following licensing agreements need to just be outlawed as unconscionable when they’re gating hardware that ends up in landfills or cutting off the public’s access to cultural touchstones. Or just shorten copyright significantly in general.