Open-Sourcing Discontinued Hardware

LinuxWhore asks: "I work for a company that recently accquired two 3Com/USR TOTALswitch units. It seemed as though we had I nice product by the price that they were going for online ($1500-$3000). However, further research had revealed to me that 3Com had decided to discontinue all work on the line shortly after their merger. All updates to the product have thus ceased. Now I am left in a situation where the product has little documentation and no chance of future security/bugfixes. If companies like 3Com were petitioned to release the souce and hardware specs to their dicontinued products, how much interest would there be in the community to write updates to code for these types of products so that they remain useful, instead of becoming a $3000 doorstop?" It's a good idea. Convincing the hardware makers will be the difficult part.

Comments

Product Lifecycle

[jerdenn]

All technical products have a product lifecyle - in the computer industry, this lifecyle is usually quicker, as a business shifts internal resources from an older, 'mature' product, into the developement of new, 'innovative' technologies.

The lifecycle of an at-market product is recognizable by four distinct phases:

General Availability: Selling is unrestricted in target markets. Carrier for new technology introductions. Marketing efforts to actively promote product. Resources allocated to enhancing and maintaining existing product.

Functional Stability: Product not targeted for new sales. Available to existing customers only, and resources allocated only to fixing major 'bugs'.

Maturity: This phase is often combined with Functional Stability. Sales are suspended, and existing fixes are made available, but no resources allocated to fixes. Limited support provided.

Retirement: Product is discontinued. Support, if available, is not dedicated, and often comes with surcharge.

Companies rely upon the product lifecycle to ensure that their Generally Available products are successfull. By extending the usefullness of products in the Retirement phase, GA products will be adversely impacted.

It is therefore not in the best interest of most companies to open spec hardware in the Retirement phase, nor is it benificial for a software company to open source Retired software products.

There may, however, be advantages to open spec or open source earlier in the product lifecycle.

-jerdenn

It does sound like a good idea

[eap]

But I can see two reasons why hardware companies might be unlikely to opensource their designs:

1. Said hardware contains design secrets used in current products.

2. Designs employ proprietary specs possibly used under license from other companies.

If I'm not mistaken, #2 is one reason why IBM is unlikely to ever opensource OS/2. Doesn't it contain some code written by MS?

It can't hurt to push for open hardware though. I would like to see these companies contribute something back to the community that has made them so wealthy.