[zxcdw]

I agree. But I'm also convinced that in practice there's absolutely no way to pressure OEMs to allow control over our devices in such way that it would lead to persistent computational opennes and freedom.

Walled gardens and eroded digital/computational liberties are here to stay, and even more so in the future. The trend has been that "hacking the device" has become harder and harder, and devices have became more and more closed and controlled. I don't expect this trend to change any time soon. I sure as hell wish it did, but why would it?

[vertex-four]

Surely, though, if hacking the device was harder - if it wasn't something practically anybody could do with a downloadable tool, for the most part - there'd be more demand for unlockable devices.