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I'm curious why a post advocating against the reuse of old hardware

If you want to know why developers don't spend months and years of their life saving you from paying $10 for a new wifi adaptor... that's the reason.

which also contains pretty much nothing but an opinion based on another person's opinion (no matter how right or wrong, intelligent or famous the other person is - it's still just an opinion) and also disparages the person asking the question is now considered an answer.

A lack of stable APIs/ABIs in the Linux kernel is a well-known reason why Android OEMs do not support their devices for longer than three years because Qualcomm/Mediatek/Samsung, major SoC producers, refuse to keep their drivers up-to-date and compatible with new major Android releases which usually come with new kernel releases.

Meanwhile another stackexchange user pretty much on the same day asks a question how he can use a device whose drivers haven't ever been mainlined thus he's unable to use it with new kernel releases which further indicates that a lack of stable APIs/ABIs for the kernel causes issues for users.

If it's the wrong place to ask such a question, please move it where it fits best.

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    No, those questions are asked by one user, and it's me. If it's the wrong place to ask such a question, please move it where it fits best. Isn't this place to ask about Unix & Linux?
    – Akib Azmain Turja
    Commented Aug 19, 2020 at 5:18
  • @PhilipCouling It would seem that you edited your linked answer and edited the quote here to reflect that, but then reverted the edit here although the answer is still modified. Is there a particular reason for that? I think it would be better to have both texts consistent ...
    – AdminBee
    Commented Feb 25, 2021 at 9:20
  • @AdminBee no. Embarrassingly I edited here thinking I was editing the referenced post. If you check you'll see I reverted here shortly after.
    – Philip Couling
    Commented Feb 25, 2021 at 9:23
  • @PhilipCouling Well, such things happen to all of us at some point or the other ;) As I said, I was just curious.
    – AdminBee
    Commented Feb 25, 2021 at 9:27

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One of the big rules of SE is that the author of a question gets to decide whether to accept an answer, and which answer to accept. You’ll find questions here where the accepted answer was correct, but then became incorrect as software changed (and the question isn’t framed in a specific context); you’ll also find questions where the accepted answer is utterly incorrect, and always was; in some cases there are even accepted answers which are dangerous.

In this instance, I don’t read

If you want to know why developers don't spend months and years of their life saving you from paying $10 for a new wifi adaptor... that's the reason.

as humiliating the person asking the question, or even advocating against hardware re-use; it describes some of the economic aspects involved, that’s all. It could be rephrased to avoid the possible underlying assumption that paying $10 isn’t onerous, yes; but I don’t think it’s as grievous as you suggest. In any frame of reference, $10 is much less than the cost of maintaining the drivers; whether that’s acceptable to the parties involved is another issue.

(With regard to the wider debate, I also find it unfortunate that hardware can’t be used as long as it remains materially viable, and I think the cost to society is much more than $10; but until everything has a cost commensurate with its real impact, this will be difficult to fix.)

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