Here's what I want the EU to do about cables:
Before you can sell a device that comes with a cable of any kind, you have to answer the question "what does the user have to do if they lose this cable?"
"they're screwed" and "they'll have to buy another from us" are not acceptable answers, and those products can't be sold. Get a better answer or use a different cable.
@foone publishing a spec: obviously good
having a second source: not something that will automatically happen? also you can still collude, lol, now *both* can profit
@foone let's pretend I am a company that wants to bring a device to market in the EU. it needs a custom cable. what do I do?
I ring a shop "Bob's Trusted Cable Second Source LLC", give them the spec, they put an item in their e-shop at the price of "how much it costs a guy in Netherlands to make exactly one of that cable, multiplied by 3"
this helps a little but very little
@whitequark @foone This is a great point
I think the requirement could more simply be that all cables should abide by open standards only (with some exceptions given to grandfathered but well known standards like HDMI)
Then furthermore, manufacturers should be disallowed from inventing new standards if their use-case is already well supported (no inventing an "open-source magsafe" just to sell more magsafe)
Tightening the process for what gets accepted as an open standard would then eliminate competitors designing differing "open" standard implementations that do the same thing but are incompatible with competitor products. Some centralised group would be needed. If a standard already exists for something, it should be modified to accommodate new use-cases, not remade separately
@MolarFox @foone that seems pretty harsh
is "weird one off cables" enough of a problem that we need to actively prevent people from improving existing standards at essentially any cost?
what happens if i buy a magsafe thunderbolt (totally noncompliant weird thing) off aliexpress? does this mean harsher surveillance of my purchases and more customs fees and more delays?
@whitequark @foone I mean in real life of course not hey
This thought-exercise seems like building a bulletproof, inflexible system in lieu of common sense, but in reality we really just don't want big manufacturers to be able to continue setting a precedent that each ecosystem needs its own set of proprietary connectors
It could just be like a compulsory sticker / notice on devices that use non-compliant stuff? Rather than something that prevents sales altogether
For those of us that own obscure industrial equipment that comes with all kinds of gigamax-fluxcap-uart™ connectors like you mentioned before, this wouldn't really change anything for us or people who make those, nor tell us anything we don't already know
@whitequark @foone Yeah that sounds like a workable solution
Don't know how DMA does it, but scrutinising down into technical detail I wonder if there'd be a "n batches of 99,999 'technically different' iPhone models" exploit or something lol
Seems like in-keeping with the goal of influencing broader industry trends, some way of targeting only the big players like this is the way to go though
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