In this case, "we" is probably a very small group of people. For starters, it's limited to folks who hear about this in the first place. Ars Technica isn't exactly a huge news site, and, while it might be mentioned on TV news, I doubt they'll be talking about it all day long, so only a subset of their viewers would hear about it. Then, beyond that, it's limited to the subset of those who believe that the appropriate response is to not buy WD products anymore. Which isn't everyone on HN, and might not even be half of them.
So maybe we're looking at 1% of the general population? Their opinion isn't going to make a big enough dent in WD's revenues to justify the cost of supporting a product like this past its commercial end of life.
I think that there is a free market answer to this, but it in no way involves successfully pressuring companies like Western Digital to support discontinued products in perpetuity. It's just good old-fashioned "caveat emptor", pure and simple.
Granted, we're talking about consumer tech, so the vast majority of emptors don't have the background knowledge to be able to successfully caveat for themselves. So that approach is sort of acknowledging that a bunch of people will be screwed.
Which might be the best you can get. This is an area with no perfect solutions. More consumer product regulation might curtail events like this, but at the cost of more regulatory costs, possibly stifling innovation, and the risk that the legislative body (few of whom really understand these issues themselves) will just deliver us the latest heinously misdesigned law in a long series of heinously misdesigned law. Leaving things as they are might avoid all of that, but would guarantee that things like this keep happening more-or-less unchecked. Which kind of solution someone prefers is perhaps more a matter of political leaning than any practical consideration.
In this case, "we" is probably a very small group of people. For starters, it's limited to folks who hear about this in the first place. Ars Technica isn't exactly a huge news site, and, while it might be mentioned on TV news, I doubt they'll be talking about it all day long, so only a subset of their viewers would hear about it. Then, beyond that, it's limited to the subset of those who believe that the appropriate response is to not buy WD products anymore. Which isn't everyone on HN, and might not even be half of them.
So maybe we're looking at 1% of the general population? Their opinion isn't going to make a big enough dent in WD's revenues to justify the cost of supporting a product like this past its commercial end of life.
I think that there is a free market answer to this, but it in no way involves successfully pressuring companies like Western Digital to support discontinued products in perpetuity. It's just good old-fashioned "caveat emptor", pure and simple.
Granted, we're talking about consumer tech, so the vast majority of emptors don't have the background knowledge to be able to successfully caveat for themselves. So that approach is sort of acknowledging that a bunch of people will be screwed.
Which might be the best you can get. This is an area with no perfect solutions. More consumer product regulation might curtail events like this, but at the cost of more regulatory costs, possibly stifling innovation, and the risk that the legislative body (few of whom really understand these issues themselves) will just deliver us the latest heinously misdesigned law in a long series of heinously misdesigned law. Leaving things as they are might avoid all of that, but would guarantee that things like this keep happening more-or-less unchecked. Which kind of solution someone prefers is perhaps more a matter of political leaning than any practical consideration.