[TheOtherHobbes]

Stallman is not right as a matter of principle.

His vision of open computing is self-centred and user hostile. It's basically MIT CS Lab computing at scale.

It's not even a new idea. Open source was a thing before Stallman - see for example DECUS tape sharing - and it will continue to be a thing long after him.

But it's not enough. Genuinely open computing would make customisation and sharing available to everyone, not just tinkerers who know what a command line is.

Modern FOSS is the exact opposite of open computing. Computing affordances are trapped inside an inaccessible technical monolith instead of an inaccessible corporate monolith.

To most of the population there is zero difference between the two.

[car_analogy]

> Genuinely open computing would make customisation and sharing available to everyone, not just tinkerers who know what a command line is.

..you're blaming FOSS for not solving the "programming is hard" problem?

> To most of the population there is zero difference between the two.

Yes, if you ignore all the secondary and ecosystem effects, such as getting to use the resulting free software. I have not once looked at the source of the linux kernel, GNOME, KDE, or Firefox, yet I benefit enormously from the development method and spirit that gave birth to them. That is not zero difference.

[jcranmer]

As a programmer, the number of times a project's closed-source nature has prevented me from fixing a problem I had as a user is... one. The number of times I've availed myself of the open-source code of a project to fix a problem I had as a user is... zero--and that includes the projects I was a maintainer of! Both of these numbers are dwarfed by the number of times being closed-source hasn't prevented me from fixing a problem (as it turns out that reverse-engineering a file format is often an effective solution that rarely needs source code).

So the direct utility of open-source in being able to fix your own itches is in fact extremely rare, even for people for whom programming isn't hard.

There is a better point about FLOSS creating an ecosystem of usable utilities for getting stuff done, one I have availed myself of on innumerable occasions. However, I will also point out that the Stallman stance on software has impeded this goal on several occasions, since GPL or even LGPL [1] licensing can prevent reuse of code. This leaves me wondering how necessary the FSF/GNU stuff was in bootstrapping the open-source ecosystem.

[1] LGPL requires you to link software in a particular way to avoid the license spreading to your code.

[MaxBarraclough]

To expand on car_analogy's point: you're ignoring second-order effects. Look at the avalanche of user-hostile nonsense that has become the norm in non-Free software. Much of it is incompatible with the FOSS model.

* Microsoft is apparently pushing to make it impossible to install Windows 11 without a Microsoft online account. [0] I know of no FOSS with the nerve to try something like that.

* Non-Free games that charge real money for in-game cheats, and are of course designed to prevent you from manipulating your own game-state

* Mobile apps that request clearly unnecessary permissions, for reasons never revealed

* Mobile apps that sell your location data, and anything other data they can get their hands on, with minimal regard for how this might impact your physical security

* Lies of omission about fixes to security flaws, and their specifics

* Intrusive telemetry that can't be disabled (although FOSS doesn't offer a total guarantee against this, see Firefox)

* edit Lies about security properties that are hard to verify without access to source code, such as falsely claiming proper end-to-end encryption

* For more see [1]

If you only run Free Software, you get many benefits even if you're unable to modify the software yourself.

> Genuinely open computing would make customisation and sharing available to everyone, not just tinkerers who know what a command line is.

This cannot be done. You can't make a car that anyone can repair, either. Software development is a skilled craft. That doesn't mean there's nothing to gain in Free Software.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30387866

[1] https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/proprietary.en.html