It’s very insidious what happened with the mobile market. PCs started out open because they predate the idea of locking users out of their own hardware. And traditionally there has been a lot of resistance to that because desktops and laptops are seen as general purpose computing platforms.
However, when smart phones started coming out they were treated as appliances. And the companies locked users out of them from the start. Now it’s just become accepted practice in name of security and protecting the users from themselves. It’s an absolute tragedy that it’s practically impossible to buy an unlocked phone nowadays that you can install whatever operating system software you want on. What’s worse is that this is starting to leak into computing as well with stuff like surface and chromebooks.
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Chromebooks have typically allowed alternative OS installs. I bought a Chromebook 6 years ago to learn web development on. I installed Ubuntu and all was good. What difficulties have you had?
Pretty sure you can never actually remove Chrome OS from the system.
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I came here to point out the same thing. Also, the trope of needing a hero to champion free software for the masses is kind of ridiculous.
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Richard Stallman is the Android generation’s Richard Stallman.
You say this, and acknowledge that RMS may have “done some great advocacy in the past”… but then you say
Fuck RMS, and fuck Android in the long-run.
Wouldn’t it be great if we had someone who could advocate for the principles of RMS, and fight for the users, without having any of the baggage or problematic history of RMS? That would be “our generation’s” RMS.
I mean, I think that’s too far. RMS’s personality is no doubt pretty controversial, but that does not invalidate all the outstanding things he has done for us, and I’d argue that we most likely would not be where we are today without him. I do however, think we need more people speaking out about these issues, and also trying to make change. Once we get people convincing politicians, and famous people to start using properly privacy respecting, FOSS apps, I think the future of tech will start to mature a bit. Right now, it’s looking kinda sketchy.
Just as an example, Ted Cruz switched over to Parler last I heard, they offer no real benefits over other social media (and wouldn’t surprise me at all if they payed him), all on a promise that they will not censor you. If he had switched to a Fediverse platform instead, and payed someone a few bucks and ran his own instance, he’d be in complete control over everything he says. I feel strongly that politicians should not be using centralized, un-federated, private, social media such as Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, etc. and that instead they should be running their own instances on platforms such as Pleroma, Pixelfed, Mastodon, PeerTube, etc. where they are in complete control over their posts and uploads.
Especially after Twitter censoring Donald Trump’s posts now, this is absurd. He is wasting time “regulating” social media, where instead he has all the tools to move to another platform. I do think partly it is ignorance, on-top of not being knowledgeable in the subject, as well as not even knowing the Fediverse exists. But if Trump moved to the Fediverse, payed someone to set up an instance for him and whoever else, and a sysop to maintain it, think about the absurd amount of outstanding traffic and press that would bring to the Fediverse, that is exactly what it needs. And you can argue, oh well the Fediverse is small, and cozy and bringing politics and thousands of people into it will ruin it… I disagree. If we are talking about an un-federeated, centralized platform, I’d agree. You can just start up your own instance, and block the instances you do not wish to see. You have the power of choice. We need people to start encouraging big names to proper alternative platforms, instead of meme platforms such as Parler, or removedute that do not provide any benefits in privacy, censorship protection, or freedom, and if anything are just as bad or worse as the current platforms.
