Detecting exploding batteries, part 2

[David Zeuthen]

Hi,

In general... a very good idea.

On Sun, 2006-09-24 at 21:20 +0100, Richard Hughes wrote:
> Attached is a patch to add three new keys:
> 
> battery.fault.perhaps_faulty
> battery.fault.oem_vendor
> battery.fault.website

Suggest to not to use the word 'fault', it's guaranteed to piss off some
entities.. some with huge legal teams.

What we're really interested in... is whether the battery is recalled
from the manufacturer. In fact, this is not specific to batteries at
all, suggest 

 info.is_recalled  (bool)
 info.recall.oem_url_link_text (string) # e.g. Dell Battery Return Program
 info.recall.oem_url_link_target        # e.g. https://www.dellbatteryprogram.com/

(please fix up the wording as needed, E is my 2nd language, thanks)

And that's it. I don't think g-p-m or whoever consumes this information
should be making assumptions about the recall. E.g. instead of this
(well meaning) notification

 http://people.freedesktop.org/~hughsient/temp/battery_explode.png

that has lots of connotations and words OEM's don't really want the user
to see..... you'd just ought to provide this kind of notification

     /\
    /  \
 +--    ---------------------------------------------------------------
 | Your battery is being recalled.                                    |
 |                                                                    |
 | The battery in [your computer|UPS] is recalled by the manufacturer |
 | and you may be at risk. For more information visit this web site   |
 |                                                                    |
 |  [link to manufacturer]                                            |
 |                                                                    |
 | [ ] Don't remind me about this again                               |
 +---------------------------------------------------------------------

Maybe this is still too strong wording.

> The FDI file currently matches against the battery models in
> https://www.dellbatteryprogram.com but I intend to add the other
> batteries from Sony and HP (when I get sent the data) and hopefully
> Apple also if we can get the info from PMU.

So, I'm not sure I want to carry this information in HAL. We really
shouldn't be including fdi files that change a lot, that would require
screw packagers of HAL. 

One direction we're taking with HAL more and more is to make 3rd party
projects (such as gphoto, sane, nut etc.) integrate with HAL and ship
the bits that is used by HAL, e.g. fdi files and addons. In that sense,
we're more and more becoming a platform with all the pro's and con's of
that. Which I think is a direction that I like.

So.. how about having a separate project / tarball with this? Whether
distributors will use this is an interesting question, it's a grey area
with potential legal issues (what happens if the battery explodes and we
failed to show a notification) and business issues (OS vendors have
partnerships with vendors of faulty batteries).

So, there's a bit of legwork figuring out whether there is an interest
for this tarball.. I can ask around at Red Hat to get some legal input,
please contact me off-list about this.

If there is interest (and I hope there is!), I urge you to create a
freedesktop.org project (no good name comes to mind except
"hardware-recall") and work with the OEM's - ideally they will
contribute data to this on an ongoing basis. It's in their own best
interestest IMNSHO but then again IANAL and there are probably
significant business interest for them to keep a lid on things. Then
again, maybe they will do the very right thing and be public about this.

In short, it's a can of worms - a potential mine field including legal
and business issues. Let's try to work those out.

Anyway, if we hopefully get interest OS vendors should just package up
that tarball and ship it as an RPM or DEB. Then they can update it all
they want.

> This patch depends on the previous patch to fix the value of
> battery.model when it includes spaces.

Is this in master yet?

    David