Microsoft's Shareholders Demand Right-To-Repair (vice.com) 37
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Microsoft shareholders have filed a resolution demanding the company seriously consider making its products easier to repair. As You Sow, a non-profit that specializes in shareholder advocacy, delivered the shareholder resolution on Thursday. According to As You Sow, the right-to-repair is important to Microsoft's shareholders because discarded electronics are destroying the world's environment, and Microsoft has pledged to help it stop.
"Microsoft is a corporate leader in pledging to take substantial action to reduce climate emissions; yet our Company actively restricts consumer access to device repairability, undermining our sustainability commitments by failing to recognize a fundamental principle of electronics sustainability: that overall device environmental impact is principally determined by the length of its useful lifetime," the shareholders' resolution said. In a 2020 blog post, Microsoft said it will invest in climate innovation and eliminate single-use plastics, but it's been quiet about repair. "Microsoft positions itself as a leader on climate and the environment, yet facilitates premature landfilling of its devices by restricting consumer access to device reparability," Kelly McBee, waste program coordinator for As You Sow, said in a press release. "To take genuine action on sustainability and ease pressure on extraction of limited resources including precious metals, the company must extend the useful life of its devices by facilitating widespread access to repair."
The shareholder resolution is demanding that the Board "prepare a report, at reasonable cost and omitting proprietary information, on the environmental and social benefits of making Company devices more easily repairable by consumers and independent repair shops." Shareholders want this report to assess the "benefits or harms of making instructions, parts, and/or tools for our products more readily available" and "the impact of potential state and federal legislation that requires all electronics companies to improve repair access and repairability."
"Microsoft is a corporate leader in pledging to take substantial action to reduce climate emissions; yet our Company actively restricts consumer access to device repairability, undermining our sustainability commitments by failing to recognize a fundamental principle of electronics sustainability: that overall device environmental impact is principally determined by the length of its useful lifetime," the shareholders' resolution said. In a 2020 blog post, Microsoft said it will invest in climate innovation and eliminate single-use plastics, but it's been quiet about repair. "Microsoft positions itself as a leader on climate and the environment, yet facilitates premature landfilling of its devices by restricting consumer access to device reparability," Kelly McBee, waste program coordinator for As You Sow, said in a press release. "To take genuine action on sustainability and ease pressure on extraction of limited resources including precious metals, the company must extend the useful life of its devices by facilitating widespread access to repair."
The shareholder resolution is demanding that the Board "prepare a report, at reasonable cost and omitting proprietary information, on the environmental and social benefits of making Company devices more easily repairable by consumers and independent repair shops." Shareholders want this report to assess the "benefits or harms of making instructions, parts, and/or tools for our products more readily available" and "the impact of potential state and federal legislation that requires all electronics companies to improve repair access and repairability."
Demand or Demand to Vote? (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft shareholders have filed a resolution
Sounds like enough shareholders have filed a resolution to put it to a vote. Shareholders won't have actually demanded it until a majority of those voting have voted to do so.
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Where "shareholders" == the largest corporate officers and institutional investors, everyone else be screwed.
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"Right to repair" is what we lost when ASE took over car repair. Then, we ended up with a high-cost regulated workers union.
Microsoft has been changing encryption keys and scrambling the critical DLLs that define Windows in every version lately,. Unfortunately, the "repair" they're talking about is using OS hacks to keep control of the computer, while more of the control passes to Microsoft. Right now, Botnets are on the decline, and the big threat is Ransomware, and there's so many ways to lock a computer
You know who this REALLY hits? APPLE. (Score:1)
Yeah, this might make it harder for Microsoft.
But this is also a direct swipe against APPLE. King of the "Throw it out and buy a new one."
My even evil-er inner voice is cackling sadistically right now.
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"Right to repair" seems to mean the ability to easily swap out parts by opening the machine, screwing out a PCI board or other component, and inserting a new one...
But computer makers have always been trying to insert proprietary chips that require you get something from them, just like the Tandy computers of the old day insisted on secret capacitors that prevent the system from being moved. So, Apple was always the sure-to-work computer that never had a conflict, DOS/Windows always had crashes due to infer
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No. Right to repair means that if something breaks, you can take it to any repair organization you wish, and actually have it REPAIRED. Not replaced. Not get told to "just buy a new one" and get forced to buy a device worth hundreds or thousands of dollars when it can be made right with a $10 part and a few minutes of labor.
It means when you buy something, you OWN it. You're not RENTING it.
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I don't think anyone really expects things to go back to being modular enough that you could pick up replacement tubes at radio shack. The closest I'd dare hope for on that front is "Don'
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And shareholder resolutions like these almost never pass when voted on at the annual meetings. The board will recommend to vote against, all the significant shareholders (founders, executes, etc.) will vote against, and it will fail regardless of the number of small-time shareholders that vote for it.
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No, demanding can be done without voting. It just doesn't mean much. Voting means a lot more, because it implies the presence of a choice which can actually be affected, as opposed to simply expressing an opinion.
Fascinating... (Score:2)
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Well to be fair, ifixit gives the Surface Pro 7 a staggeringly bad 1/10 for repairability.
That's what you get for thinness, I guess.
If the board's response were that one can always instead get a business-grade laptop, e.g. a Latitude or a Thinkpad that allow you to swap out various components then I'd encourage those activists to vote with their wallets.
A $2trillion dollar company that has transformed itself into a new 'woke' Microsoft ought to care about sustainability over pure profit, no?
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iFixIt is basically saying "We can't open this!" on the Surface series. On the other hand, they have a license to fix iPhones...
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To be clear, I believe in right-to-repair. For this though, I'm surprised and confused. Right-to-repair obviously reduces profitability (you sell less stuff).
Sustainability is key to long-term profitability. If you only care about pumping and dumping then it's irrelevant. I personally try not to buy anything that is difficult to repair unless it is dirt cheap. And dirt cheap stuff tends to have thin margins.
I have a cheap-ass $300 HP laptop, it is not very repairable. But it was cheap. There's no much profit in that laptop, it's a Ryzen with socketed RAM. If I'm gonna buy a $2000 laptop I'm going to get something real, like a Fujitsu, that I know I will be able
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You're confused, but your assertions are garbage.
Products that customers can easily repair have higher demand. It adds to the perceived value. People are more willing to pay high prices for something that they know they can repair than for something that is essentially disposable.
So no, it doesn't "obviously reduce profitability"
And if you'd read the summary, you'd realize that shareholders aren't even asking for the products to be more repairable; they're asking for the company to submit a report detailing
Excellent (Score:2)
Huh? What? (Score:2)
I'm mostly scratching my head trying to figure out what they are talking about. The article and demands here are completely nonsensical to me. What is not repairable? Microsoft generally doesn't produce hardware outside of XBox and Surface. They make an OS, an office suite and a few other things. Their major version OS lifecycle is roughly a decade, which is twice as long as any other major desktop OS. The only "right to repair" I can think of is the prohibitively expensive code signing certificates f
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I was struck by this also - I have never bought a physical object made by Microsoft in my life, nor have I encountered one in any office. XBox and Surface would have to be it I think. I've seen XBox in stores, never a Surface anywhere that I can recall.
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never a Surface anywhere that I can recall.
You've never been into a Bestbuy or any other computer shop? The Surface stand is about the same size as the Apple stand in most of them. You could always go to a Microsoft store as well.
But yes the Surfaces come to mind as a standout item for right to repair. There are few devices on the market that are harder to repair than Apple products, but Microsoft figured they can outdo Apple in that metric.
Re: Huh? What? (Score:2)
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What is not repairable? Microsoft generally doesn't produce hardware outside of XBox and Surface.
The only "right to repair" I can think of is the prohibitively expensive code signing certificates for publishing software for Windows.
You quoted a whole product series that is infamous as being the worst in the industry in terms of repairability but then you can't "think of it"? Hint: They are talking about the Surface line-up.
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I'm mostly scratching my head trying to figure out what they are talking about. The article and demands here are completely nonsensical to me.
They're demanding a report, like it says in the summary. They want the company to tell the shareholders what all the business details are that lead to MS releasing products that get 1/10 ratings for user repair.
I pay more for my Thinkpads than I would have to pay for a mostly-comparable laptop from another brand. The biggest difference is that I know I can repair the Thinkpad if I need to. It isn't disposable. Shareholders want to know why MS doesn't receive that same premium, and isn't even on the list of
How about the right to reboot? (Score:3, Funny)
I am not sure what they'll do about the right to repair, but Microsoft has definitely been at the forefront of the fight when it comes to the user's right to reboot. They definitely deserve some credit for that. We take reboots for granted nowadays but let's not forget that wasn't always the case before Microsoft appeared on the scene. They wouldn't let you reboot a mainframe, would they?
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Sure they would! It's called an IPL (Initial Program Load).
Also Microsoft⦠(Score:1)
Recent announced Windows 11 requires TPM 2.0, which is not available in a multitude of year old systems out there.
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If you have fTPM on an AMD BIOS or IPTT on an Intel BIOS that is Firmware TPM 2.0 and can simply be enabled. Discrete TPM 2.0 adapters are available for some boards. However of course these onerous requirements are going to contribute to landfill as you also need 2nd gen Ryzen or an 8th gen Intel CPU. The leaked Windows 11 beta can be tricked into installing by deleting some dll from the ISO, but I doubt that will hold true for the release.
LOL (Score:1)
Re: LOL (Score:2)
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Sorry angry old white man. Publicly traded companies are a democracy with voting. I feel bad for you that these "radical children" are getting in your way and attempting to make the world a better place, but you can take solace in the fact that this isn't about American businesses. They are an equal opportunity bunch and happy to fuck over all businesses run by anti-consumer old angry men. It's nothing against you personally.
Re: LOL (Score:1)
And then, there goes the planet.
Now get apple (Score:3)
shareholders on board with right to repair.
"Right To Repair" is just tip of the iceberg... (Score:2)
what we really need is way broader "Right To Insight" - what is really is in the box and how good and safe it really works ?
Whole lotta good this will do (Score:2)
When software continuously increases hardware capabilities to perform more or less the same tasks.
Used to watch youtube, IM, email, browse, listen to music, read books, etc, on a barely 200 MHz single-core device with 64 MB RAM.
the cheapest android phone i see in the stores near me right now costs less than a tank of gas and is *orders* of magnitude more powerful, but even so, i bet my left testicle, using it will be pure torture.
Release the source code (Score:2)