This was the original cyberpunk-transhumanist message. Not “cybernetics will destroy your soul” but “corporations own your body, or worse parts of your body”
I don’t think that’s a fair characterization - it sounds like they ran out of money and the company that bought all their assets didn’t maintain support. In that company’s defense, it’s really hard to maintain support for something when you’ve bought the IP but you don’t have any of the institutional knowledge.
Would that even be legal? The company has obligations to its creditors and shareholders; simply giving away potentially valuable intellectual property right before going under seems to violate those obligations. And it’s the sort of violation for which someone might be personally held liable.
I’m not claiming that a company can never open-source anything, but rather than they have to have a plausible business case for doing so. And I don’t see a plausible business (as opposed to humanitarian) case here… But I’m not a corporate lawyer, just someone interested in this sort of thing.
Edit: there’s also the FDA to consider. If you make medical devices and you want to release the source code, you probably need to demonstrate that it’s safe for users to reprogram their devices (and it’s not safe).
Wow that made me so fucking uncomfortable, from the serious adverse affects requiring surgical intervention, the company trying to shout down negativity and just leaving these poor people to continue suffering….
It’s all so horrid, I can’t imagine the stress and impact
and 3 years later they’ll end the support.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/bionic-eye-obsolete
This was the original cyberpunk-transhumanist message. Not “cybernetics will destroy your soul” but “corporations own your body, or worse parts of your body”
Terrifying. No government bailout for improving people’s life quality…
That’s a new hell-on-eath I wasn’t aware of. Yikes.
Well that’s fucking bleak, at least I got a good chuckle out of this
So that’s how they keep JavaScript devs hooked!
Thanks for sharing.
I don’t think that’s a fair characterization - it sounds like they ran out of money and the company that bought all their assets didn’t maintain support. In that company’s defense, it’s really hard to maintain support for something when you’ve bought the IP but you don’t have any of the institutional knowledge.
Maybe it’s a hot take but if you are giving life-altering treatments, and your company goes under, you should open-source everything
Would that even be legal? The company has obligations to its creditors and shareholders; simply giving away potentially valuable intellectual property right before going under seems to violate those obligations. And it’s the sort of violation for which someone might be personally held liable.
I’m not claiming that a company can never open-source anything, but rather than they have to have a plausible business case for doing so. And I don’t see a plausible business (as opposed to humanitarian) case here… But I’m not a corporate lawyer, just someone interested in this sort of thing.
Edit: there’s also the FDA to consider. If you make medical devices and you want to release the source code, you probably need to demonstrate that it’s safe for users to reprogram their devices (and it’s not safe).
Wow that made me so fucking uncomfortable, from the serious adverse affects requiring surgical intervention, the company trying to shout down negativity and just leaving these poor people to continue suffering….
It’s all so horrid, I can’t imagine the stress and impact