There are many perfectly workable electronics systems that have been bricked due to a lack of support. We find this to be tragic: we’re mining precious metals and assembling them into expensive products that end up in the trash after a few years instead of being sustained and usable for their entire possible lifetime.
Responsible designers figure out a long-term support plan for their products. Ideally, support would be indefinite.
We are sure that some of you will say “there has to be a suitable support line to draw somewhere, and forever isn’t it.” Maybe you’re right. Is it reasonable to expect manufacturers to support products forever? At some point, teams would simply be burdened with supporting existing products and would not have the capacity to be able to build new ones.
You might also ask yourself, “is it reasonable to expect updates and support for a Palm Pilot [or any other old piece of tech] in today’s world?” Some of you might say no, but there is still a community dedicated to preserving the work and history of Palm OS, making tools and applications available to Palm users even in 2021.
This points us to an alternative to indefinite support: open source the software and tools when you’re done and give the community the option to continue.
We can sense the pushback even now – “but what about my IP? I’m not going to release that for people to use, especially since we’re still using it on existing products!” I have no sympathy for this argument – to protect your IP, you have an excellent option: continue support!
Responsible designers will put some plan in place for indefinite support, whether that is through the company itself or through releasing tools so an interested community can handle the support.
Ideally, the plan will also be published openly.
References
- This concept was derived from our article Bricked for Want of Support
- Responsible Designers Publish Support Lifetimes for Their Products