[thereddaikon]

>Now it seems like the vast majority of the needs and requirements to run software locally have been replaced with networked services and a browser/thin client interface.

And its almost always done to remove agency from the user and give it back to the corporation. Again, RMS is right. You can only truly have digital freedom if you are running your own software on your own hardware. It only seems old timey because we have been drinking the everything as a service kool aide for so long.

It doesn't have to be this way and it's not necessarily technologically superior. Its due to business forces more than anything else.

>Even RMS's free game example is bad. One of the players can modify their copy to cheat, and the other players dont have any real option in that situation.

Not everything he advocates for is always practical, the game example is one. You have to have some kind of central control in multiplayer games to make sure people aren't cheating. But there is still wisdom in what he says. We have single player only games that are demanding the same kind of access and control that multiplayer ones are. Obviously that isn't to prevent cheating.

And sometimes he is still right about a problem even if he sees every all of them as technological nails to be solved with a FOSS hammer. That's not going to work but he is identifying the problem correctly. Banks and governments are weaponizing the financial system against people they don't like and can't be trusted. How do you prevent them from doing it? I think ultimately its not a technological problem, its a political/societal one. Banks need to be reigned in and politicians need to be more afraid of the people.