Right to Repair Software?

Say I want to repair Microsoft Word.

One implementation of this right is requiring Microsoft to give me access to the source code, build tooling, any engineering documents and perhaps access to the dev team depending on how far this law would go.

Another implementation, that I feel is far fairer is allowing me to interface with Microsoft Word so I could develop an alternate route to repair whatever functionality isn't working.

Microsoft already does the latter though maybe not to the level desired. They have C#, VBScript and COM. I recall using COM Interop in C# to get access to online presence data from Microsoft Lync.

I wouldn't care

I'm one person

Not a development team with all the tribal knowledge of a given tool, and the millions of developer-hours that have already gone into building it

OSS is already "right to repair" ... yet how many people actually contribute something when they find an issue?

Expand that to "how many people even submit a bug when they find a problem?"

I'd wager the answer to the broader question is a lot less than 0.1%

And of those, the ones who actually make a fix is probably also a lot less than 0.1%

Out of a million users, maybe 1,000 would submit a bug (if they found it)

Out of 1,000 bug submitters, maybe 1 would post a fix (if they could)

The GPL already includes a right to repair GPL-licensed software.

We would implement it through the "4 freedoms" of software.

https://edtechbooks.org/openedreader/stallmans-four-freedom#....

When one speaks about Right to Repair, one needs to consider also ability to test the software to verify that nothing else was broken.

This means access to the software testing suite used by the software provider.

Unfortunately, the software testing suite is not considered by the various GPL licenses to be part of the source code, even though it would help safely modifying the software in question.

An example: Oracle keeps control over Java by not making its Java certification test suite publicly available.

> How could we implement such a right?

I can't even begin to answer the first question until the second question is at least sketched out. What does "right to repair" even mean in software? Software is very different than physical machinery in many really important ways.

Technically, in the US, you already have the "right to repair" except in the cases where you'd need to break an access control to do it. Revisiting the DMCA anticircumvention laws strikes me as the best path to "right to repair".

Concerning medical software, there is the general problem of having to regulate "tampering" (making unauthorized alterations) of medical equipment.

No, I wouldn’t support this for software that doesn’t include a right-to-repair-license. It’s the software maker’s choice to offer it and the consumer’s choice to buy it or not.