I just came across Cisco’s gray market PDF promotion for Cisco Refresh. This “promotion” is spreading good old fashioned FUD – Fear Uncertainty and Doubt. Louis Rossman who is a champion of the right to repair speaks about this tactic a lot when used by large companies to try and control their product and reduce the repair ability of products such as a used firewall or other product.

In the case of Cisco’s promotional junk they are saying that buying used from resellers on eBay might introduce counterfeit equipment, or pirated software and how these could harm your business, so buy from Cisco new, or use their Refresh service!

What a sad attempt to prevent people from using second hand products. After all they wouldn’t make any money from people using second hand devices.

This is just another argument for why we need right to repair and open source software.