The company behind this robot is going bankrupt, which is why support ends and they stop working. This law would do nothing in this case because the company seizes to exist.

Only if there's an absolute bare minimum they're allowed to choose of 5-10 years after the last device/software is sold.

And even then, I still think they should be required to unlock devices (and software DRM bullshit/APIs to re-implement server components) to allow people who want to maintain them themselves.

It’s not a corporation anymore if it ceases to exist. Sounds like the engineers are working pro bono on this initiative.

Most companies don't listen, these guys did. Many times when people did the right thing, they had to go through a process first.

It would have been if they did it completely on their own, maybe even designed the system for this possible outcome from the beginning.

But it's the end result that matters. They can release the source or they can not. They chose to release it, and that's great!

Startups like this aren’t known for their robust infrastructure design.

It’s most likely running on some weird unicorn setups no-one has bothered to document.

Likely they have proprietary or otherwise private information they want to clean out first, or they want to make it more presentable or documented.

I agree I'm not a fan of the "trying to" phrasing either.

They might rely on parts that have non open sourced drivers or firmware. Perhaps different parts of the code were authored by different people and they need everyone approval.

What ever could go wrong with that?

Oh, right. Winamp very recently showed us exactly what could go wrong with that.

Electric companies hate this one simple trick for unlimited free electricity!

Exactly. Another example of people who are on forums like this are worlds apart from people who know quite literally less than nothing about computers.

So these robots will be autobots?

Amazon was effectively giving them away for free for a large portion of their lifespan. You'd have deals where you'd pay for them and then get a coupon for actually using them equal to the purchase price. I feel like I even remember a few times where the coupon you got worked out to slightly more than you paid for the button. Basically, saying that someone 'bought' one was usually only partially true.

They did have a few legitimately good uses. Had to have something that needed restocking sporadically but you also didn't think about often and could wait 2-3 days to receive when you realized you were out. A lot of prerequisites there, I used the ones for trash bags and detergent often.

It's mostly just a shame the amount of ewaste produced at this point. I still have a box full somewhere in hopes of finding a use case.