win95/98/ME and printers. An ethics issue comparable to DRM servers or not?

[Oren Beck]

Drifted kipple snipped:

The direct focus of my Original Post seems missed by comment drift.RE
HP Drivers.

Since the HP windows drivers in question are for a Deprecated or EOL
situation- HP not only has stopped having the download on their site-
They are not allowing legal distributuion by others of those drivers.
Because they CAN it seems.

The drivers are NOT a GPL covered software.

It is a closed source proprietary software license of THEIR "Drivers"
code. THEY are  within their legal "rights" to not allow distributing
of "deprecated or EOL" product drivers-Their Code-Their legal right.
MY query is aimed at the ethics.


The ETHICS of how that is done speak much of a company and it's customer care.
If a vendor is told to deprecate drivers for product Foo on an OS
older than "bar" date?  They may be legally correct in so doing. As it
seems HP has done RE the win XX drivers under discussion. Is orphaning
your customer base's hardware ethical-let alone smart?  That fork of
ethics to be greed or good. With a feedback potential of one fork
being an earned gain in customer base. Or a customer base loss earned
by "bad" Ethical choices.

The DRM ethics connection comes to haunt yet again.One situation is a
printer you paid for and found it essentially deactivated for lack of
driver avaibility.

The other situation is DRM locked content rendered *DEAD* to you from
servers shut down. That shutdown - and NO alternate provision for your
continued use of content PAID FOR ALREADY?  That 's another question
of what Ethics are afoot.

BOTH cases rest on a pattern. Getting money from a customer. Applying
quite legal sophistry to write contract/EULA/Etc to create a
perception of durable utility.
All neat and common law compliant to an initial glance.
Except it's moral ancestry seems at present derived from Mr Barnum of
Circus fame.

" This way to the EGRESS!"