[jasonallen]

Agreed - Stallman was right all along. What's working against Stallman though is that his doomsday predictions are being delivered in piecemeal fashion. Each slight erosion doesn't seem too bad by itself. Only in retrospect does the magnitude of the problem reveal itself. Governments and corporations have evolved processes to change laws in such effective manners as to evade most human observation.

tldr; No one tells you the plane's not coming - they just tell you it's 20m late, perpetually...

[Create]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog

[jonhendry]

I think the main flaw is that, no matter how popular GPL software becomes, it doesn't stop the government from saying "your machines need to run this closed-source software in order to be used or sold in this country".

[rcthompson]

That would be a difficult law to enforce without declaring martial law. If smartphones are any indication, it's difficult to design a device that cannot be convinced to run unauthorized code.

[SideburnsOfDoom]

You're saying something different. "can run unauthorized code" is different from "must run this closed-source software". Both could be true at the same time.

What good is your free, open, secure channel if your phone is also a running mandatory rootkit, containing a GPS tracker and keylogger? See also: Carrier IQ.

[dalke]

Here's an easy way: promote the use of a security cryptographic communications protocol. Fund development of a plugin for Windows. Advocate or even pass a law that banks, the IRS, and other organizations support it. Ignore requests that the code be published and/or available for other OSes. Ta-da! You've effectively discouraged use of free OSes.

Okay, it's still possible to have a system without proprietary software. Just much harder, and not worth the frustration to most people.

See the links from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEED as an example of that scenario in action in South Korea.

[ars]

It would be reverse engineered pretty quickly.

Reverse engineering code is pretty hard - but that sounds like a lot of motivation.

[dalke]

Did you read the link? "Unfortunately support for SEED alone is not enough to allow for secure transactions with Korean web services."

There's motivation, but still something missing.

[ars]

What's missing? The wiki page doesn't say.

[jonhendry]

"If smartphones are any indication, it's difficult to design a device that cannot be convinced to run unauthorized code."

True, but you could require that the device have a little semi-autonomous widget attached that monitors the rest of the device, can't be controlled by software on the main device, and can't be removed or deactivated without seriously reducing functionality of the device.

The government would simply have to say "put this in your phones, and require devices on your network have it enabled, or you don't get FCC approval."

[dextorious]

"""That would be a difficult law to enforce without declaring martial law."""

I seriously doubt that.

There are current laws in practice that would have needed martial law declared to be enforced (or even passed) a century of even a few decades ago.

And we're talking about "detain anyone for any period" and such laws, so in comparison the general public could care less about an "only run state-sponsored non Open Source software" law.

[16s]

I've heard that North Korea does something similar. People can buy software at Universities, etc. without question, but to get a computer they must go through the government.

[jiggy2011]

yes, or it could even be open source spyware that you have to run anyway to be compliant with the law.