[einpoklum]

> this old timey way of using computers, where you had a general purpose machine that was personal that you programmed to do things you needed,

Personal machines are actually new-time'y, not old-time'y. In the old times there weren't that many computers, and you accessed one via a terminal.

The difference is more in how remote services are now things you can't program and modify and tinker with, but rather closed-source "products" or "services" in shiny wrappers.

[ordinary]

It is worth pointing out that einpoklum's point is not merely academic: Stallman is old enough that he really did get introduced to computers and programming and software through corporate and university mainframes, and not through personal machines like (I assume) most of us.

The decline of the early open hacker culture in favour of corporate proprietary software during the 70s deeply informed the idea behind Free Software.