What good is Linux and free software if the hardware won't let us run the programs we want? Computers could ship with a preconfigured Linux distribution that does all sorts of abusive things and since we wouldn't have the cryptographic keys to the machine it's impossible to do anything about it.
In the future, all computers could very well be just like video game consoles: devices which refuse to run software not cryptographically signed by their true owners. Software development kits are restricted to corporations and likely provised under strict licenses and NDAs. Users are supposed to just consume content within the narrow context defined by corporations. We're not supposed to create or change anything. They don't want us to be able to run software they don't approve of.
This reminds me of ARM SBCs including the raspberry pi. The manufacturer creates a device specific build of Linux. Usually the vendor doesn't care and just provides you with an ancient 2.6 kernel because the SoC vendor provides GPU drivers that only support 2.6. There are also often device specific modifications in the kernel and since Chinese vendors don't care about upholding the GPL they just give you the kernel without source code.
Ironically nobody cares about these SBCs because of their poor software support for new versions of the linux kernel.
Fair enough. The FOSS operating systems are not sufficient to save computing as we know it. But they are necessary. So I don't think it's wrong to bring up their importance. Hardware under our control won't do us any good if we don't have the software.
Yet, one of the main companies behind Linux is Microsoft and one of the main companies behind BSD is Apple. It's really hard not to have a negative outlook on both.
Apple is not behind BSD at all, using Darwin is not being behind BSD. Any of the the popular BSD distributions is not backed by Apple. Not to mention Microsoft needs linux, not the other way around. Microsoft is desperate to get linux developers on windows, using WSL. They had to rename Windows Azure to Microsoft Azure. Linux would not be affected at all if Microsoft stops contributing. Azure will be if it stops offering Linux VMs.
In the future, all computers could very well be just like video game consoles: devices which refuse to run software not cryptographically signed by their true owners. Software development kits are restricted to corporations and likely provised under strict licenses and NDAs. Users are supposed to just consume content within the narrow context defined by corporations. We're not supposed to create or change anything. They don't want us to be able to run software they don't approve of.