| If VW and all other product manufacturers of products containing universal machines as components were forced to charge customers a 100% sales tax on all such end-of-chain products, UNLESS all (and I do mean all, down to the controller on the SSD or the battery controller or whatever) universal machines in the product complied with the following: A) If there is stored code for a specific universal machine in question and the storage is re-writeable, and B) there is a control mechanism in place to integrity check the stored code before execution, and C) the integrity check mechanism relies on a cryptographic secret, or any mechanism which prevents the owner from changing the code but permits the OEM to, then D) the specific universal machine's key store MUST permit full wiping of all keys in a way where no keys are stored anywhere (no permanent manufacturer keys), and the key store MUST permit the owner to store his own root keys; additionally, in the interest of national security and the average citizen's digital sovereignty, E) replacement software/firmware for universal machines should be encouraged rather than stifled, so additionally there must also be technical specifications detailing enough of the hardware's architecture and the overall design of the part or product (the logic in making design decisions to accomplish product functions), to permit a skilled owner to write his own firmware and achieve similar functionality as shipped. Basically, think Louis Rossmann gets together with Richard Stallman, and they form a beautiful baby governmental regulatory body to come up with "Apple Laws" (sic: Lemon Laws) to answer and address the Apple Question. Abandoned proprietary code on abandoned proprietary hardware is a national security concern much greater than the minute problems caused by the occasional tinkering script kiddie. It will mean the end of the easy money of putting everyone on subscription, and would encourage more evergreen platform/API design to reduce developer-driven code churn. If companies want to make cheap proprietary throw away product which will house malware in a decade when the company has long abandoned patching holes in it, and design it so no owner has a practical chance or hope of fixing the vulnerability, then companies can suffer a price-doubling tax that'll go to pay for their open source competitors to more easily compete! Sorry, not sorry. Get expertise producing material things people need, if what I outlined above would mean the high paid software gravy train ends lol. |