After the EU “right to repair” should there perhaps be a “right to longevity” for connected objects, to enable them to be reanimated by open-source code and platforms once they have had their motivating spirit of software removed by the shuttering of whatever service they were originally the avatar of?

I reanimated my Little Printer last year with the help of the good folks at Nord, who in turn were able to do that because Matt Webb had open-sourced the code when BERG’s Little Printer / Bergcloud shut down.

Google just announced that they are to shutter Stadia. I was an early adopter – and have one of the quite handsome Stadia controllers. It’s a really nice games controller! Look – it even got a mini documentary about it’s design engineering presented by Baratunde Thurston!

So – as Stuart Horton says:

A really nice goodwill gesture from @GoogleStadia would be to unlock the Bluetooth firmware of the Stadia controller before the service shuts down for good. Let gamers use the controller with a PC so it doesn't end up as tonnes of landfill

— Stuart Houghton but he's actually a dracula (@stuarthoughton) October 1, 2022

Indeed!

And let’s not stop there – let’s mandate that anything that is manufactured with atoms, but animated by software and services *must* have it’s firmware at minimum open-sourced if the service is shutting down.

Feels like a good bit of ‘endineering‘

Allow old phones, aibos, connected juicers, jibos, Nabaztags to rise like polycarbonate phoenixes from their slumbers.

An EU right-to-longevity might keep more atoms out of landfill by letting the bits be free.

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Update 2023-01-17: Stadia team are working on making the controller work with other devices / Bluetooth https://9to5google.com/2023/01/15/stadia-controller-bluetooth-certification/