Digital Geneva Convention
That's a bloody good idea. We also need a Ministry of IT with people in charge who actually know about computers. (Hey, a gal can dream, yeah?)
The real problem is drivers. While it's been standard practice for home users to throw away their printers, scanners, cameras, graphics cards, routers and other devices and buy new when a new update renders them inoperable, that isn't exactly a viable option for something like an MRI scanner. So, obsolete Operating Systems are retained for want of any alternative. (There is even kit still in use in industry that expects DOS, or Windows 3.11.)
Let's have a law like: If you want to sell a piece of hardware that depends on a general-purpose computer for its operation, then you have to release enough information that would allow a sufficiently-competent programmer to write a driver that would make it usable with a different computer. Source Code with comments and meaningful variable and function names should be considered sufficient for this purpose.
And no whinging from manufacturers about revealing things to their competitors. Everyone would be in the same situation. This is the NHS we are talking about. Other people's right to live outweighs your right to hoard "intellectual property".
Biting the hand that feeds IT
