The future of 32-bit Linux

> It would need to provide a precise legal definition of "support," and I just don't see how you would go about defining such a thing. And then you have issues of "I modded it and now their new firmware update broke everything," which is a whole other can of worms... IMHO you get to keep both pieces if that happens, but others will disagree with me.

Similar to what they do with cars - spare parts etc MUST be freely available for ten years after manufacturing stops.

Let's define "lifetime suppport" as say 5 years. So if a phone maker releases a phone with a version of Android for which support stops in a year, the manufacturer is on the hook to take over for the remaining four.

And I don't know about other law, but we have a concept in UK law of "fit for purpose", and if you have a security breach or something, then that surely is NOT "fit for purpose".

Note also the thing about cars - it's down to the manufacturer to make sure spares are available, they don't have to do it themselves, they can off-load it. So if they can find a bunch of enthusiasts to take over with a bit of support from the manufacturer, that's good enough. Those enthusiasts might even upstream a load of proprietary fixes ... :-)

Cheers,
Wol