Google are switching off all older Nest thermostats

MattMattMattUK

mmmmikey said:

MattMattMattUK said:

2nd Gen Nest Thermostats were discontinued ten years ago, 1st Gen thirteen years ago, I would say that is an entirely reasonable period of time to support a smart product. I would not expect a company to keep indefinitely supporting a product and it would not be reasonable to try to compel them to do so. 

I'd agree with that. The issue I have is not so much that they are dicontinuing support, more that they are preventing others from offering that support after they have decided not to.

Out of interest, how exactly are they preventing others from offering support? All the Nest thermostats apart from the most recent version have been hacked, one can make them run on private servers, change settings not exposed to the user etc. 

mmmmikey

MattMattMattUK said:

mmmmikey said:

MattMattMattUK said:

2nd Gen Nest Thermostats were discontinued ten years ago, 1st Gen thirteen years ago, I would say that is an entirely reasonable period of time to support a smart product. I would not expect a company to keep indefinitely supporting a product and it would not be reasonable to try to compel them to do so. 

I'd agree with that. The issue I have is not so much that they are dicontinuing support, more that they are preventing others from offering that support after they have decided not to.

Out of interest, how exactly are they preventing others from offering support? All the Nest thermostats apart from the most recent version have been hacked, one can make them run on private servers, change settings not exposed to the user etc. 

The restrictions (as I understand it) are legal rather than technical. It's one thing hacking someone elses software for your own use, it's another thing hacking someone elses software then selling a service based on those hacks commercially. That said, I do agree with the general thrust of the point you made earlier.