[omnicognate]

> The political hopes that free software would help build a more free and anti-capitalist future are largely forgotten, and when remembered, seem embarrassingly specific to a certain mode of computing.

We are living in the "more free" future (it was never anti-capitalist) that free software built, and it spans most "modes of computing", dominating some. The thing that's specific to one mode of computing is having no practical alternative to an exploitative, consumer-hostile, proprietary walled garden. That's specific to mobile computing, and it's not some inevitable consequence of capitalism, only of monopoly power and weak regulation.