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by babycake 1608 days ago
For sure, but companies didn't win by building a better product. They won because of copyright laws that helped them to enforce their goal of profits.

If we want computing freedom, or in other words: consumer rights, then we need to enact laws that are pro-consumer to ensure an open future. Things like being able to repair our devices were taken away (Apple) and brought semi-back with right-to-repair laws (albeit only proposed atm), ownership of software and your data taken away by online services (Adobe, etc), and lots others.

Having open source hardware won't stop companies trying to take control away. We already see Microsoft and their SecureBoot problems with Linux. Or maybe they just won't support those open source machines by refusing to deploy their OS or whatever. Then what audience are you gonna have to make that product successful to become the new standard?

Laws are the only way to force everyone to play nice. We can have the nicest open source stack, but that's nothing if companies can just seize them with their own laws.

1 comments

> Having open source hardware won't stop companies trying to take control away. We already see Microsoft and their SecureBoot problems with Linux. Or maybe they just won't support those open source machines by refusing to deploy their OS or whatever. Then what audience are you gonna have to make that product successful to become the new standard?

We need to get rid of those products and replace them with free software instead. It doesn't even matter if it's better or worse, as long as it's ours. This is the most sensible long term investment since it's the only thing that will truly benefit humanity forever.