Right to Repair advocate Louis Rossmann is escalating his fight for consumer rights, launching a new non-profit, the Fulu Foundation, to challenge the erosion of digital and physical product ownership. In an announcement video, Rossmann, alongside colleague and researcher Kevin O’Reilly, detailed a mission that expands beyond simple repairability to confront the legislative, cultural, and legal frameworks that prevent consumers from truly owning what they buy.
The move formalizes years of Rossmann’s activism into a structured organization aimed at systemic change. This new foundation is an evolution of his previous advocacy, which included the Repair Preservation Group for awareness and a separate fund for lobbying. The Fulu Foundation’s goal is to inform and empower the public against practices that turn purchases into restrictive licenses, an issue affecting everything from smartphones and tractors to medical equipment.
A central pillar of this new strategy is the Consumer Rights Wiki, a community-driven platform that began in January 2025 as the ‘Consumer Action Taskforce Wiki’. Its stated mission is to document “a new generation of consumer exploitation that bears no resemblance to issues of the 1950s-1990s. We focus on the issues that often go unnoticed by review sites, tech press, and traditional consumer protection publications.”
A New Front in the Fight for Ownership
The Fulu Foundation aims to be a multi-faceted operation. Kevin O’Reilly, whose research has been key in exposing manufacturer restrictions, will play a key role. His prior work includes the “Deere in the Headlights” report, which detailed how software locks prevent farmers from repairing their own tractors. The foundation will continue this type of investigative work, building legal and public pressure campaigns around its findings.
This new organization will tackle the issue on three fronts: legislative, cultural, and legal. By engaging in direct lobbying, public education campaigns, and potential legal challenges, the foundation seeks to create a broad-based movement that re-establishes clear ownership rights for consumers.
At the heart of the foundation’s public effort is the Consumer Rights Wiki. The project invites the community to help build a comprehensive database by turning videos from a curated Video Directory into structured, citable articles. The initiative has already sparked significant conversation, with a Hacker News discussion exploring the complex legal and technical hurdles of modern ownership.
Community members have suggested that when companies terminate support for a digital product, they should be legally required to remove the DRM and provide the files to the owner. This sentiment is echoed on the wiki’s associated Discord server, where one user praised it as a “great community of people looking out for and keeping tabs on” companies that harm consumers.
Shifting Tides in the Tech Industry
A 2022 report from the US PIRG Education Fund, using data from France’s repairability index, gave poor marks to major tech companies. At the time, Microsoft Surface devices averaged just 4.6 out of 10.
However, by June 2024, iFixit was praising the new Surface Laptop 7 as “an astonishingly repair friendly device, almost the antithesis of the original Surface Laptop”, awarding it a high 8/10 score. This shift followed Microsoft’s expanded partnership with iFixit to provide official Surface and Xbox repair parts, a move spurred by a 2021 shareholder Right to Repair initiative, which advocacy group As You Sow reported led to Microsoft’s commitment.
Even Apple, historically one of the most resistant companies, has altered its stance somehow. In August 2023, the company voiced its support for California’s Right-to-Repair bill, SB 244. California State Senator Susan Talamantes Eggman called the move a demonstration of “the power of the movement that has been building for years”.
The Broader Battleground
The fight for ownership extends beyond consumer electronics. Rossmann noted that the inability to repair equipment affects critical sectors, including the military, where readiness can be compromised by restrictive contracts. These issues also impact medical device users and farmers, who face equipment downtime and high costs due to manufacturer-controlled repair ecosystems.
By documenting these varied instances of consumer exploitation, the Fulu Foundation aims to build a unified case for reform. The goal is to move the conversation from niche tech forums to mainstream public consciousness, creating a cultural and legal environment where owning a product means truly owning it.
