This would also make sense in order to prevent e-waste and put this old hardware to better use.
It's crazy to think how much computing power is just added to a drawer or landfill every day, just because there is no reason for the vendor to allow you to repurpose it.
I would e.g. LOVE a "Browser on everything" OS which just provides a Browser OS for outdated hardware, but the only way this could work on scale would be if the device-vendor would be mandated to provide and document the lower layer...