> In this context this would mean having the ability and documentation to build or install alternative operating systems on this hardware
It doesn't work. Everything from banks to Netflix and others are slowly edging out anything where they can't fully verify the chain of control to an entity they can have a legal or contractual relationship with. To be clear, this is fundamental, not incidental. You can't run your own operating system because it's not in Netflix's financial interest for you to do so. Or your banks, or your government. They all benefit from you not having control, so you can't.
This is why it's so important to defend the real principles here not just the technical artefacts of them. Netflix shouldn't be able to insist on a particular type of DRM for me to receive their service. Governments shouldn't be able to prevent me from end to end encrypting things. I should be able to opt into all this if I want more security, but it can't be mandatory. However all of these things are not technical, they are principles and rights that we have to argue for.
fastaguy88 · 13m ago
Really not a libertarian, but why shouldn’t Netflix have the right to choose who they distribute content to? They negotiated conditions with the creators, why shouldn’t they be able to specify the DRM? No one is forcing you to subscribe to Netflix. Or even to buy an iPad.
ranyume · 5m ago
>why shouldn’t Netflix have the right to choose who they distribute content to?
power asymmetry
ls612 · 22m ago
I mean you’re right but it seems like the equilibrium we’re heading towards is one where the opposite is true and our internet and society looks more like China’s. Principles unfortunately mean little in the face of societal and technological change, the only thing that matters is the resulting incentives.
idle_zealot · 3h ago
This makes the point that the real battle we should be fighting is not for control of Android/iOS, but the ability to run other operating systems on phones. That would be great, but as the author acknowledges, building those alternatives is basically impossible. Even assuming that building a solid alternative is feasible, though, I don't think their point stands. Generally I'm not keen on legislatively forcing a developer to alter their software, but let's be real: Google and Apple have more power than most nations. I'm all for mandating that they change their code to be less user-hostile, for the same reason I prefer democracy to autocracy. Any party with power enough to impact millions of lives needs to be accountable to those it affects. I don't see the point of distinguishing between government and private corporation when that corporation is on the same scale of power and influence.
wisty · 2h ago
Remember, the law provides patent, copyright, trade mark, and NDA protection.
While it would be a burden to require a degree of openness, it's not like companies are all rugged individualists who would never want to see legal restrictions in the field.
It's just a question of what is overall best and fairest.
Restrictions can both help and hinder innovation, and it's innovation that in the ling run makes things improve IMO.
SilverElfin · 1h ago
> Google and Apple have more power than most nations.
Yep. They control our information - how we make it, what we are allowed to find, and what we can say. And they are large enough to not face real competition. So let’s treat them like the state owned corporations they are and regulate heavily. Smaller companies can be left unregulated. But not companies worth 500 billion or more.
jacquesm · 1h ago
> Google and Apple have more power than most nations.
And that is what is wrong here. Even the smallest nation should be far more powerful than the largest corporation. But corporations are now more powerful than most nations, including some really big ones. So the only way to solve this is to for an umbrella for nations that offsets the power that these corporations have.
The first thing you notice when you arrive at Brussels airport is the absolute barrage of Google advertising that tries to convince you that Google is doing everything they can to play by the rules. When it is of course doing the exact opposite. So at least Google seems to realize that smaller nations banding together wield power. But they will never wield it as effectively as a company can, so we still have many problems.
lukan · 1h ago
"And that is what is wrong here. Even the smallest nation should be far more powerful than the largest corporation"
Since nations can be really small, I don't agree.
pharrington · 1h ago
This was my first thought too, but the largest corporations are way too large any healthy society.
makeitdouble · 37m ago
> Google and Apple have more power than most nations.
To push further, Google and Apple have basically as much power as the US.
The UK going after Apple, only to get rebutted by the US is the most simple instance of it. International treaties pushed by the US strongly protecting it's top corporations is the more standard behavior.
Any entity fighting the duopoly is effectively getting into a fight with the US.
throwaway31131 · 26m ago
> To push further, Google and Apple have basically as much power as the US.
If this is true then why is Tim Cook visiting Trump? Shouldn’t it be the other way around.
1vuio0pswjnm7 · 1h ago
"This makes the point that the real battle we should be fighting is not for control of Android/iOS, but the ability to run other operating systems on phones."
Sometimes owner control, cf. corporate control, can be had by sacrificing hardware functionality, i.e., features, closed source drivers. Choice between particular hardware feature(s) working and control over the hardware in general.
colordrops · 23m ago
Yes but in the phone space the sacrifice is too much. You often times forgo the ability to even participate in many aspects of society, e.g. banking. It's not your typical "rough around the edges open source alternative", it's just not even a comparison.
bsder · 2h ago
The primary problem is that we can't build a phone and run it on a cellular carrier network. This is where legislation is needed.
Apple and Google are still a problem, but they are a secondary problem.
dwattttt · 2h ago
You'll run into a variant of the tragedy of the commons; without any kind of regulation or provable assertions from people taking part in common communication infrastructure, it'd be quite easy to ruin it for everyone.
bsder · 2h ago
You don't need to allow completely unrestricted access to the network. However, there needs to be a process with a defined cost to certify your hardware. The cost can be expensive and time consuming but it needs to be known and published and the cellular companies need to be held to it.
The problem right now is that even if I had a couple of million dollars lying around, I STILL couldn't reliably get a piece of hardware certified for the cellular network. I would have to set up a company, spend untold amounts of money bribing^Wwooing cellular company executives for a couple years, and, maybe, just maybe, I could get my phone through the certification process.
The technical aspects of certification are the easy part.
The problem is that the cellular companies fully understand that when it happens their power goes to zero because they suddenly become a dumb pipe that everybody just wants to ignore.
That's why this will take legislation.
fijiaarone · 1h ago
Monopolists always talk about the tragedy of the commons, but don’t see anything wrong with the tragedy of the monopoly and don’t want you to think anything can exist in between.
ACCount37 · 1h ago
You kind of can? The carrier network has no way to verify that your cellular modem is a real modem made by a real modem company, and not 3 SDRs in a trench coat standing on the top of each other.
The sheer technical difficulty is what makes this kind of thing impractical.
The network does validate that a SIM card is a real SIM card, but you can put a "real SIM card" in anything.
SchemaLoad · 1h ago
Yeah pretty much. I don't disagree on principal that people should be able to install a custom OS on their device. But in practical terms it doesn't really matter all that much because hardware is so complex and moves so fast that no hobbyist has even close to the time and resources to develop a custom OS for the latest phones.
The M1 Macbook Air is 5 years old now, has an active development, lots of community funding and attention, yet is still missing basic functionality like external monitors and video decoding. Because it's just a mammoth task to support modern hardware. Unless you have a whole paid team on it you've got no hope.
ranger_danger · 1h ago
IMEI whitelisting is common in the US at least... I think this shuts down the trench coat idea.
SilverElfin · 1h ago
But how do we start a movement for these ideas? I feel like there isn’t awareness outside of niche circles and the public may not see the short term benefit. Meanwhile politicians are lobbied by the same corporations and won’t listen.
immibis · 59m ago
I don't think the cellular network is the problem at all - everything except SMS and PSTN calls works on wifi. The problem is the apps. Netflix only runs on a verified bona fide electrified six car Google- or Apple-approved device; so do most financial apps (EU law requires them to) and basically everything else where the app developers are trying to get money off you (which is most apps). Some apps will refuse to play ads on a non-genuine device and then refuse to function because you aren't watching ads. Play Store does its best to stop you installing its apps on a nongenuine device, but it has to support older devices without TPMs so it's not fully locked down yet. Even YouTube has some level of attestation.
rs186 · 36m ago
In the US at least, you could already have a lot of trouble with Wi-Fi calling when using unlocked Android phones. And it is basically nonexistent if you use a phone purchased outsiden US.
AtlasBarfed · 2h ago
This is one of the real canaries I watch on "real AI" for programming.
It should be able to make an OS. It should be able to write drivers. It should be able to port code to new platforms. It should be able to transpile compiled binaries (which are just languages of a different language) across architectures.
Sure seems we are very far from that, but really these are breadth-based knowledge with extensive examples / training sources. It SHOULD be something LLMs are good at, not new/novel/deep/difficult problems. What I described are labor-intensive and complicated, but not "difficult".
And would any corporate AI allow that?
We should be pretty paranoid about centralized control attempts, especially in tech. This is a ... fragile ... time.
ACCount37 · 2h ago
AI kicks ass at a lot of "routine reverse engineering" tasks already.
You can feed it assembly listings, or bytecode that the decompiler couldn't handle, and get back solid results.
And corporate AIs don't really have a fuck to give, at least not yet. You can sic Claude on obvious decompiler outputs, or a repo of questionable sources with a "VERY BIG CORPO - PROPRIETARY AND CONFIDENTIAL" in every single file, and it'll sift through it - no complaints, no questions asked. And if that data somehow circles back into the training eventually, then all the funnier.
AtlasBarfed · 31m ago
That's one of the boil-ups. Why would lack of Linux compatibility for hardware be a thing? If AI can write the drivers in 1/10th the effort/time, it should be a game changer for open source.
I haven't heard much from the major projects yet, but I'm not ear-to-the-ground.
I guess that is what is disappointing. It's all (to quote n-gage) webshit you see being used for this, and corpo-code so far, to your point.
ACCount37 · 20m ago
AI can't write full drivers, and certainly not to mainline Linux quality. But it does make "take apart a proprietary driver to figure out how it works" much easier.
hnuser123456 · 2h ago
GrapheneOS?
jetbalsa · 2h ago
Only runs on a handful of hardware, and still uses the binblobs from google for the hardware devices.
SlowTao · 1h ago
That is a fair point, this is a similar issue that Libre-boot went through a few years back. Yes, you try to stick clear of binary blobs as much as possible but at a certain point you just run out of hardware that meets that criteria.
tzury · 1h ago
We need both options to coexist:
1. Open, hackable hardware for those who want full control and for driving innovation
2. Locked-down, managed devices for vulnerable users who benefit from protection
This concept of "I should run any code on hardware I own" is completely wrong as a universal principle. Yes, we absolutely should be able to run any code we want on open hardware we own - that option must exist. But we should not expect manufacturers of phones and tablets to allow anyone to run any code on every device, since this will cause harm to many users.
There should be more open and hackable products available in the market. The DIY mindset at the junction of hardware and software is crucial for tech innovation - we wouldn't be where we are today without it. However, I also want regulations and restrictions on the phones I buy for my kids and grandparents. They need protection from themselves and from bad actors.
The market should serve both groups: those who want to tinker and innovate, and those who need a safe, managed experience. The problem isn't that locked-down devices exist - it's that we don't have enough truly open alternatives for those who want them.
mjevans · 1h ago
Incorrect.
Choice 2. Empowered user. The end user is free to CHOOSE to delegate the hardware's approved signing solutions to a third party. Possibly even a third party that is already included in the base firmware such as Microsoft, Apple, OEM, 'Open Source' (sub menu: List of several reputable distros and a choice which might have a big scary message and involved confirmation process to trust the inserted boot media or the URL the user typed in...)
There should also be a reset option, which might involve a jumper or physical key (E.G. clear CMOS) that factory resets any TPM / persistent storage. Yes it'd nuke everything in the enclave but it would release the hardware.
maxwelljxyz · 42m ago
I like the way Chromebooks do things, initially locking down the hardware but allowing you to do whatever if you intentionally know what you're doing (after wiping the device for security reasons). It's a pity that there's all the Google tracking in them that's near impossible to delete (unless you remove Chrome OS).
judge2020 · 1h ago
Consider the possibility of an evil maid type attack before a device is setup for the first time, e.g. running near identical iOS or macOS but with spyware preloaded, or even just adware.
shakna · 47m ago
We already have that today. And locked down systems don't prevent it, because you can always exploit some part of the supply chain. A determined actor will always find a path.
judge2020 · 23m ago
Right now you'd need a zero-day bootrom exploit to do something like this - still a possibility for the average high-level intelligence operative, but not the average white collar citizen. The proposal is making such a thing a feature.
cyberax · 2m ago
This can be fixed by adding some user-controlled "fuse". For example, with a TPM you will lose access to stored keys if the boot sequence is modified.
flomo · 1h ago
Keep in mind one of these third parties would almost certainly be Meta (because users want their stuff), and that would almost certainly be a privacy downgrade.
echelon · 1h ago
Freedom > Privacy > Security
Never give up your freedom.
If you have to give up your privacy to ensure your freedom, so be it.
If you have to give up your security to ensure your privacy, so be it.
This goes for governments and phones.
judge2020 · 1h ago
> This goes for governments and phones.
Apple does not have the ability to throw me in prison or take away my freedoms. Only to not grant me extra freedoms subsidized by their R&D budget.
kg · 37m ago
Technically for US residents Apple can throw you in prison for attempting to maintain and use your freedoms, thanks to the anti-circumvention parts of the DMCA.
echelon · 1h ago
Apple has removed your freedom from day one.
Their R&D budget is at the expense of a free market that would have delivered the same or better products.
Did you ever see how wild and innovative the Japanese mobile phones were before iPhone monoculture took over?
I want crazy stuff like a smartphone that has the form factor of a Raspberry Pi. Or a smartphone with e-Ink. Crazy new categories of devices.
Sadly, the Apple/Google monopoly has turned smartphones into one of the shittiest, most locked down device categories. It's a death place for innovation.
JSR_FDED · 39m ago
Nobody is forcing you to buy their products, so they haven’t taken away anything from you.
If you do decide to buy their products, nothing has changed since the day of your purchase, so they haven’t taken away anything from you.
Their “monoculture” didn’t “take hold” - it beat the Japanese offerings through innovation and a better product.
They operate in a free market, their R&D budget is made possible by their market success. If things change in the market (e.g. AI) the market will vote the way it always does.
echelon · 36m ago
The market has forced us all to buy Apple or Google. There is not a vibrant field of alternatives, and there is certainly a desert of hobbyist tech.
The market is now so depressed that everyone has to jump through these companies' hoops to participate in the most important computing form factor in the world.
Don't apologize for trillion dollar hyperscalers. They don't need your love, adoration, or apology. They do not care about you at all.
Too much power has accrued to these two and it's being leveraged against all of society and the open market. Competition is supposed to be difficult, ruthless, challenging, and frenetic. I see two companies resting on their laurels that are happy to tax us into the next century while we wear their little straightjackets.
flomo · 34m ago
Always fun to interact with some internet Thomas Jefferson giving freedom speeches from his mother's basement.
Reality is that people pay a lot of money because they 'trust' Apple (and to a lesser extent Google), but Meta is the sleaziest one of them all. (And I don't use their shit either.) But people want Whatapp and Instagram, and so you are telling them now they have sell-out and go to the "Meta App Store" to talk to their friends. That fucking sucks. And I think you agree with that.
echelon · 1h ago
This.
We need a mobile bill of rights for this stuff.
- The devices all of society has standardized upon should not be owned by companies after purchase.
- The devices all of society has standardized upon should not have transactions be taxed by the companies that make them, nor have their activities monitored by the companies that make them. (Gaming consoles are very different than devices we use to do banking and read menus at restaurants.)
- The devices all of society has standardized upon should not enforce rules for downstream software apart from heuristic scanning for viruses/abuse and strong security/permissions sandboxing that the user themselves controls.
- The devices all of society has standardized upon should be strictly regulated by governments all around the world to ensure citizens and businesses cannot be strong-armed.
- The devices all of society has standardized upon should be a burden for the limited few companies that gate keep them.
Barbing · 1h ago
>big scary message
Open question:
Any idea on making it so difficult that grandma isn't even able to follow a phisher’s instructions over the phone but yet nearly trivial for anyone who knows what they’re doing?
AnthonyMouse · 1h ago
Sure. You ship the device in open mode, and then doing it is easy. The device supports closed mode (i.e. whatever the currently configured package installation sources are, you can no longer add more), and if you put the device in closed mode, getting it back out requires attaching a debugger to the USB port, a big scary message and confirmation on the phone screen itself, and a full device wipe.
Then you put grandma's device in closed mode and explicitly tell her never to do the scary thing that takes it back out again and call you immediately if anyone asks her to. Or, for someone who is not competent to follow that simple instruction (e.g. small children or senile adults), you make the factory reset require a password and then don't give it to them.
Barbing · 51m ago
Very nice!
I’m sure I’m missing a problem with the following approach: shipping in _closed_ mode with a sticker on the front notifying the person they should do a factory reset immediately to make sure they can do everything they want to do. During the reset, include a scary message for those who opt in to get to open mode.
Everyone simply goes by defaults so it would only be technical people presumably who would even get into the open mode in the first place. And then require the debugger to leave closed mode like you said.
Edit: this comment worries about solo/asocial/“orphaned” members of our society
AnthonyMouse · 48m ago
The problem with that is the owner has to choose which package sources they want to allow before the device is in closed mode, because after that adding more requires the scary reset, and the vendor of course has the perverse incentive to ship the device in closed mode with only their own store enabled, which has to be prohibited because it's anti-competitive.
XorNot · 1h ago
Fix the phone system so calls must positively identify themselves.
There is no reason anyone purporting to be from a business or the government should be able to place a call without cryptographically proving their identity.
Barbing · 57m ago
I like that! I’m sure it would take a little bit of time for folks to stop trusting calls from personal numbers where highly-capable social engineers do their best work, but eventually I expect nearly all of us would learn the lesson.
And presumably we could set up notifications so our elderly relatives’ phones would alert us to calls from unverified numbers not in their contact list lasting longer than a minute or two.
immibis · 1h ago
Stop gatekeeping actually useful apps. Nobody should never need to see the message to do anything they actually want to do, otherwise it leads to normalization of deviance.
False positives from PC virus scanners are very rare.
Barbing · 56m ago
Interesting, mind elaborating a bit/clarifying the first couple of sentences there? A point I’d like to understand
hobs · 1h ago
What are you on about? The last 10 years of computing the only time windows defender pinged was on false positives.
paulryanrogers · 1h ago
I'd argue that even the 'safe' devices should at least be open enough to delegate trust to someone besides the original manufacturer. Otherwise it just becomes ewaste once the manufacturer stops support. (Too often they ship vulnerable and outdated software then never fix it.)
Almondsetat · 1h ago
If the user cannot be trusted to maintain the hardware and software, then the only responsible thing is to rely on the manufacturer to do so. In those cases, if the support is dropped you buy the newest device.
nickthegreek · 1h ago
Paul knows that. He is arguing for a different future. google is about to remove my ability to remotely control my thermostat. Not even local control. Imagine a world where they would have to choose between continued device support or unlocking… or maybe just building out the local control and cleaning their hands of it. Having corpos as the arbiter of a consumers buying schedule and creating unnecessary easter is pretty undesirable.
chrisweekly · 1h ago
easter?
anonym29 · 1h ago
I'm guessing autocorrect for e-waste / ewaste
mitthrowaway2 · 1h ago
What if that is the newest device?
AnthonyMouse · 1h ago
> The problem isn't that locked-down devices exist - it's that we don't have enough truly open alternatives for those who want them.
The problems is that vendors use "locked down devices" as an excuse to limit competition.
Suppose you have a "locked down" device that can only install apps from official sources, but "official sources" means Apple, Google, Samsung or Amazon. Moreover, you can disable any of these if you want to (requiring a factory reset to re-enable), but Google or Apple can't unilaterally insist that you can't use Amazon, or for that matter F-Droid etc.
Let the owner of the device lock it down as much as they want. Do not let the vendor do this when the owner doesn't want it.
koolala · 1h ago
On Steam Deck, you never even have to set a 'sudo' password. You can have a safe managed experience and still allow a device to be open. Option 2 is ridiculous because it will just be exploited by companies and governments that want to control what you do or what content you see.
throwaway31131 · 34m ago
> The problem isn't that locked-down devices exist - it's that we don't have enough truly open alternatives for those who want them.
Plenty of companies have attempted this over the years but it’s not obvious that a big enough customer base exists to support the tremendous number of engineering hours it takes to make a phone. Making a decent smart phone is really hard. And the operations needed to support production isn’t cheap either.
llukas · 29m ago
Government maybe rather than legislating big companies stores could not back up smaller open HW/SW vendors? It seems we gave up increasing competition on HW and what is left is app store level...
josephcsible · 33m ago
No, we need to only have option 1, because if option 2 exists, things like banking apps will all only run on it and will refuse to work on option 1.
qmr · 1h ago
You're wrong.
My hardware. My decision.
makeitdouble · 44m ago
I don't think it will convince you in any way, but the whole point is/will be that it's not your hardware, you're paying for a perpetual license to use a terminal bound to someone else's service.
throwaway22032 · 1h ago
The issue with this is that inevitably the locked down devices, which will end up being 98%+ of the market, become required for ordinary living, because no-one will develop for the 2%.
Open hardware is essentially useless if I need to carry both an open phone and a phone with the parking app, the banking app, messenger app to contact friends, etc.
charcircuit · 1h ago
For security reasons it makes sense for them to be different devices. People and services may not want to allow insecure devices to communicate with them.
immibis · 1h ago
Why? It's not like the insecure device doesn't have my identity key on it. If I program it to spam people, I go to jail for spamming.
jen20 · 48m ago
If only you went to jail for spamming.
charcircuit · 49m ago
It would be easier to spoof such identities and some services may not want to deal with the overhead of using the legal system. Spammers today already can be taken to court, but in practice people don't do that.
fellowmartian · 1h ago
I think this is a false dichotomy. Open hardware with open source software would be more protected simply by being more stress tested and vetted by more people. If you need even more protection you can employ zero-knowledge proofs and other trustless technologies. I have long been dreaming about some kind of hardware/software co-op creating non-enshittifying versions of thermostats, electric kettles, EV chargers, solar inverters, etc, etc. Hackable for people who want it, simply non-rent-seeking for everyone else.
positron26 · 1h ago
> more stress tested and vetted by more people
Grandma and grandpa aren't reading the source code and certainly not up at a professional level. This is one of the core misconceptions of the "free/libre" formulation of OSS.
nik282000 · 26m ago
> Grandma and grandpa aren't reading the source code and certainly not up at a professional level.
This is one of the core misconceptions of the anti "free/libre" formulation of OSS. Most users don't need to read the entire Debian source to know that it is safe to use. You are free to look up who maintains any part of the project and look at the history of changes that have been made. A lot of projects have nice, easy to read notes along with the actual code.
If you are so paranoid that you can't even trust open release notes then why would you trust a closed project at all?
fellowmartian · 1h ago
I’m not suggesting grandpa reads code, contributors do. We all know that most commercial code is much shittier than open source. Sure, commercial code usually covers more edge cases and has better UX, but is cobbled together from legacy and random product asks.
positron26 · 59m ago
> contributors do
More users != more contributors. As software gets more popular, you begin getting 10, 100, 1000, 1,000,000 users for every contributor.
This doesn't just affect non-programmers. We can't even police NPM.
People want it to be true so that it will be a talking point, but it's not true, and we need to find new talking points that align with facts that are evident outside the echo chambers.
dismalaf · 36m ago
NPM is... special... It's up to platform owners to set standards and police. NPM's failures have nothing to do with open source as a whole.
jen20 · 50m ago
> We all know that most commercial code is much shittier than open source
Citation needed. Seriously.
rmunn · 39m ago
I'm not the one who made that assertion, but... Windows Millenium Edition almost makes his case all by itself.
jen20 · 36m ago
That makes the case that a _single_ piece of commercial code was shitty.
I could make the same argument about MongoDB of a decade ago implying that all open source is trash...
ranger_danger · 1h ago
> contributors do
I would argue most code of any license is not actually regularly audited if at all, and certainly nowhere near the levels people seem to think they are.
> We all know that most commercial code is much shittier than open source
citation needed
p_ing · 59m ago
> I would argue most code of any license is not actually regularly audited if at all, and certainly nowhere near the levels people seem to think they are.
Every device should run OpenBSD. And only the audited part.
stale2002 · 1h ago
> Locked-down, managed devices for vulnerable users who benefit from protection
Thats fine! Just make sure it is possible for someone to take the same device and remove the locked down protections.
Make it require a difficult/obvious factory reset to enable, if you are concerned about someone being "tricked" into turning off the lockdown.
If someone wants baby mode on, all power too them! Thats their choice. Just like it should be everyone else's choice to own the same hardware and turn it off.
judge2020 · 1h ago
> Make it require a difficult/obvious factory reset to enable, if you are concerned about someone being "tricked" into turning off the lockdown.
Is there also a way to make it obvious to the user that a device is running non-OEM software? For example, imagine someone intercepts a new device parcel, flashes spyware on it, then delivers it in similar/the same packaging unbeknownst to the end user. The same could be said for second-hand/used devices.
It's potentially possible the bootrom/uefi/etc bootup process shows some warning for x seconds on each boot that non-OEM software is loaded, but for that to happen you need to be locked out of being able to flash your own bootrom to the device.
divan · 2h ago
> It should be possible to run Android on an iPhone and manufacturers should be required by law to provide enough technical support and documentation to make the development of new operating systems possible
As someone who enjoyed Linux phones like the Nokia N900/950 and would love to see those hacker-spirited devices again, statements like this sound more than naïve to me. I can acknowledge my own interests here (having control over how exactly the device I own runs), but I can also see the interests of phone manufacturers — protecting revenue streams, managing liability and regulatory risks, optimizing hardware–software integration, and so on. I don't see how my own interests here outweigh collective interests here.
I also don’t see Apple or Google as merely companies that assemble parts and selling us "hardware". The decades when hardware and software were two disconnected worlds are gone.
Reading technical documentation on things like secure enclaves, UWB chips, computational photography stack, HRTF tuning, unified memory, TrueDepth cameras, AWDL, etc., it feels very wrong to support claims like the OP makes. “Hardware I own” sounds like you bought a pan and demand the right to cook any food you want. But we’re not buying pans anymore — we’re buying airplanes that also happen to serve food.
saurik · 2h ago
It being difficult is different from it being possible. If a company wants to raise $50m to read all the documentation and build an alternative OS to run on this crazy piece of hardware, as the consumer I still benefit. If you'd prefer, let's stick with repair? I also need all of that information to be able to repair my phone, but again, it wouldn't necessarily be ME who repairs my own phone: I take it to a third-party expert who has built out their own expertise and tools.
(Hell: I'd personally be OK without "documentation"... it should simply be illegal to actively go out of your way to prevent people from doing this. This way you also aren't mandating anyone go to extra effort they otherwise wouldn't bother with: the status quo is that, because they can, they thrown down an incredible amount of effort trying to prevent people from figuring things out themselves, and that really sucks.)
fastball · 2h ago
> $50m to build a modern OS from scratch
heh.
fijiaarone · 1h ago
Nobody would invest $50 million to enter a trillion dollar market.
wkat4242 · 2h ago
> I can acknowledge my own interests here (having control over how exactly the device I own runs), but I can also see the interests of phone manufacturers — protecting revenue streams, managing liability and regulatory risks, optimizing hardware–software integration, and so on. I don't see how my own interests here outweigh collective interests here.
However the interests you mention aren't collective at all but very singularly the ones of the manufacturer only
HDThoreaun · 2h ago
Its only the manufacturers interests because they dont want people to brick their phone on accident. Really theyre only a secondary party of interest, the real interested party is grandma/anyone who can fall victim to malware. Apples decision to ban sideloading is a huge part of how they became the most popular phone maker in the us
wkat4242 · 1h ago
The real interest is their protection of their sweet 30% revenue stream. There are many ways to protect security, leaving all your keys in the hands of one party is not the only one.
And there should also be the right to be able to opt out of the manufacturers' protections of course.
HDThoreaun · 27m ago
Youre not wrong about the real interest but security is another very real one.
> There are many ways to protect security, leaving all your keys in the hands of one party is not the only one.
When youre dealing with idiots its a bit harder than you might expect. Tons of idiots own phones and if apple allowed them to be the victim of security vulnerabilities they get terrible pr.
zapzupnz · 56m ago
> because they dont want people to brick their phone on accident
Or worse, blow them up.
tern · 1h ago
Not to mention, it's an authoritarian attitude, talking about forcing companies to support arbitrary software stacks
jacquesm · 1h ago
That's not what they wrote at all.
immibis · 58m ago
Is it authoritarian to stop other people from being authoritarians?
sudosysgen · 2h ago
There is already open source software for UWB, computational photography, various depth cameras, direct link WiFi, etc...
Will it be as good as the iOS implementation? Probably not. But it's hardly an impossible fact and not one that has to be done entirely over and over for every device. The Asahi folks showed it could be done despite hostile conditions.
Ferret7446 · 2h ago
I think we really need to discuss whether IP/copyright protections were a mistake. A LOT of our "modern" problems stem from IP protections. Whether that be not being able to own media, right to repair, DRM, censorship, a lot of monopolistic behavior, medicine prices, etc. And no wonder, IP protection is government sanctioned monopoly, and it is generally recognized that monopolies are bad; is it such a surprise that government enforced monopolies are bad?
throwaway13337 · 2h ago
Agreed. Monopoly is the killer of the market engine that powers the positive sum society we all benefit from.
Actually enforcing the anti-monopoly rules on the books would help, too.
And while we're making wishes, we could kill the VC-backed tech play by enforcing a digital version of anti-dumping laws.
With those rules in place, we'd see our market engine quite a bit more aligned with the social good.
Not really sure what this has to do with running your own code, though.
If a manufacturer makes a device locked down, it's the technological protections preventing you from running your own code. Not IP/copyright. Sometimes they get jailbroken but sometimes not.
jacquesm · 1h ago
Plenty of barriers around circumventing such obstacles hinge on IP legislation.
Liftyee · 2h ago
As other comments have pointed out, this statement (one I 100% support, BTW) is a little naive. I can see how it might be unreasonable to expect companies to publish documentation, build infrastructure, etc. to support running your own code on the hardware you own (which 99% of people will never need to do).
However, I strongly believe that - should one choose to do so - you should not be stopped from jailbreaking, cracking, etc. manufacturer restrictions on the hardware you own. Companies aren't obligated to support me doing this - but why should legislation stop me if I want to try? (You can easily guess my thoughts on the DMCA.)
danpalmer · 2h ago
> Companies aren't obligated to support me doing this
Where does one draw the line on support? If I jailbreak an iPhone, should I still get Apple customer support for the apps on it, even though they may have been manipulated by some aspect of the jailbreak? (Very real problem, easy to cause crashes in other apps when you mess around with root access) Should I still get a battery replacement within warranty from Apple even though I've used software that runs the battery hotter and faster than it would on average on a non-jailbroken iPhone?
I feel like changing the software shouldn't void your warranty, but I can see arguments against that. I probably fall on the side of losing all software support if you make changes like this, but even then it's not clear cut.
crazygringo · 1h ago
The line is definitely crossed if you jailbreak your phone. It seems pretty clear. Either you're using the device as the manufacturer intended or not. If I take a device rated for 2m of water down scuba diving to 25m, it voids my warranty too.
agentultra · 2h ago
100 percent agree.
I’ve given talks on how various jailbreak exploits work in order to teach people how to protect their own software but also with the suggestion that we should be able to do this.
It’s nuts that personal computers aren’t personal anymore. Devices you might not think of as PC’s… just are. They’re sold in slick hardware. And the software ecosystem tries to prevent tampering in the name of security… but it’s not security for the end user most of the time. It’s security for the investors to ensure you have to keep paying them.
daft_pink · 2h ago
There’s something weird about it. My phone needs to be hyper secure, and a lot of companies went to monetize that and introduce insecurities with their software.
That’s why I love my iPhone, but I’m not super happy about what happens with my Mac.
There’s something in the reality that it’s the app developers not the user that are being restricted by Apple. Apple keeps the app developers from doing things I don’t like for the most part. I don’t feel very restricted.
But I don’t want my computer to become a walled garden. It’s only OK for my phone.
OsrsNeedsf2P · 23m ago
What does this have to do with the article?
pparanoidd · 15m ago
Flexibility is usually inverse of security
betaby · 2h ago
EU is dropping the ball here. Instead of mandating open hardware they trying to force companies to comply with random stuff, mostly censorship and spying. In theory EU can mandate open bootloaders like EU mandates USB-C charging, but they won't. Open hardware is the enemy of the EU, since that means everyone would be able to bypass the chatcontrol of the day.
hoppp · 2h ago
Eu has the Digital Markets Act and what google is doing is illegal in Eu.
Gatekeepers must allow people to side-load software by regulation.
Makes me think that google did this now since trump has been criticizing the DMA, so now they feel empowered by their leader to break the law
SchemaLoad · 1h ago
Google does still let you sideload though. The publisher has to submit ID but other than that, there are no restrictions.
bccdee · 28m ago
Apple also permits people who follow an application process to sideload software. That's still illegal. I'm not sure what the details are of this EU law, but it's entirely possible that Google will be noncompliant here.
betaby · 45m ago
Side loading is absolutely not equal open bootloader!
mullingitover · 2h ago
Command+F 'drivers'
0 results
These things are never thought through. Sure, Apple could unlock the whole thing, tell everyone to go nuts. Who's writing the damn drivers? Apple's certainly not obligated to open source theirs, I also can't imagine them signing someone else's. So we end up with a bunch of homebrew drivers, devices crashing, getting pwned, and the dozens of people who install a third party OS on their iPhone write furious articles that get voted up to the front page of HN.
Almondsetat · 1h ago
Open source drivers are the overlooked heroes that make everything work. If linux hadn't had all these drivers written or ported to it (think of your intel NICs) the OS would be dead in the water
SlowTao · 1h ago
Bingo. They may not be as fast or feature complete but they do work.
breve · 20m ago
Start with buying the right hardware. Fairphone offers more control over the hardware:
The first thing that came to mind when I heard hardware we own was vehicles like a Rivian where they do run a lot of software. I can understand why they'd not want people to run software in order to avoid bad press. If someone writes something and things go wrong, it will look bad for the manufacturer, even if they're not at fault.
notatoad · 2h ago
The inevitable conclusion of this battle is an acknowledgment that you never really own an iPhone or android in the first place, and the companies stop selling the hardware at all. You’ll only be able to rent a device as part of your service plan.
kylecazar · 3h ago
It's a matter of ownership vs. licensing. You own the hardware you buy, but you license the software. I agree with the author that as long as you use that software, you should be subject to the constraints of the license.
The key is that if you choose not to run that software, your hardware should not be constrained. You own the hardware, it's a tangible thing that is your property.
Boils down to a consumer rights issue that I fall on the same side of as the author.
EvanAnderson · 3h ago
The hardware should not be equipped with undefeatable digital locks. Put a physical switch on the hardware (like Chromebooks have-- had?) to allow the owner to opt out of the walled garden.
Also worrisome are e-fuses, which allow software to make irrevocable physical changes to your hardware. They shouldn't be allowed to be modified except by the owner. (See Nintendo Switch updates blowing e-fuses to prevent downgrades.)
charcircuit · 1h ago
E fuses are needed so people can't downgrade the device to old insecure software to exploit it. Without it or an equivalent like a secure monotonic counter how do you think such attacks be protected?
SchemaLoad · 1h ago
There's a disagreement on who the attacker is. From Nintendo's perspective, the owner of the device is the attacker. From the owners perspective it's Nintendo.
Obviously the parent commenter believes you should be able to exploit your own device and downgrade the OS if you wish.
bccdee · 25m ago
That's an oddly legalistic line to draw. What if they start licensing the hardware too? Surely if we care about users being respected by technology, the line between software and hardware or between ownership and licensing is immaterial. These are all excuses to deny users the opportunity to do things they should be entitled to do, like installing arbitrary applications.
glitchc · 2h ago
First, we had bespoke computer systems where the hardware and software were tailored to solve specific problems. Then, as computers became commoditized, the hardware was more standardized and software interacted with it through an abstraction layer. Now, we're circling back to heterogeneous hardware where software and hardware are tightly coupled for the best performance and power efficiency. Of course there's always a trade-off. In this case, it's flexibility.
The smartphone does not consist of just one processor, it's a collection of dedicated processors, each running custom algorithms locally. Sure, there's software running in the application layer, but it's playing more of a coordination role than actually doing the work. Just think of sending a packet over the internet and how different it is between a smartphone and a computer, how much more complex a cellular modem is compared to a network card.
It's less about software now and more about hardware accelerated modules. Even CPUs run primarily on microcode which can be patched after the fact.
These patterns are cyclical. It will take a number of years before we return to standardized compute again, but return we will. Eventually.
hibikir · 2h ago
When the hardware is complicated enough that the software required to run it al all would take many millions of dollars to replicate, hardware freedom alone doesn't cut it. Just like a modern processor needs mountains of microcode to do anything you'd actually want. And that's without companies needing to obfuscate their hardware to avoid interoperability they don't want.
In practice, a whole lot software would have to be open source too so that the hardware is reasonably usable. The layers you'd need to let an iPhone run android well, or a Pixel phone to run iOS are not small.
jerbearito · 1h ago
This feels like an arbitrary level of abstraction for how much control a user should have. When you buy a phone, you're buying a combination of components designed and paired for that manufacturer's software. Can the user potentially replace that software? Sure, but should they be expected to?
If they just wanted hardware, they could buy their own and piece something together, if we're exploring those kinds of hypotheticals. But buying an Apple or Android device is a different choice and I think, within that context, a user should be able to run the software they want.
SlowTao · 1h ago
I think it is more a case of, at least provide the option to have another OS. Chances are that nobody else will be able to make it work but having it closed off before even getting a chance to try feels a little unfair to those that buy the hardware.
fastball · 2h ago
Much harder to make a secure device that is resistant to getting pwn'd if you can run any code you want. I personally prefer my iPhone to be more secure than to be more open.
Buy a more open phone if you want one, but stop trying to use legal means to force the software on my phone to be worse for my use-case just because you want to have your cake and eat it too.
srcreigh · 51m ago
Closed devices are secure, yes. Apps can use pinned https certs. Apple signs the binary. This ensures that when your personal data is exfiltrated, it will go undetected by malicious third parties such as yourself.
gdulli · 1h ago
Once you decide to trade your liberty for security, it becomes the norm and then no one has liberty.
fastball · 1h ago
Apple is a company, not a government. I haven't traded my liberty for anything. Again, you can buy a different phone – that is where liberty comes into this equation.
If the USG decides to pass a law saying you can only buy iPhones, then we will have more to talk about w.r.t. liberty.
Nothing actually prevents you from modifying your iPhone however you see fit, btw. If you are incapable of breaking Apple's security without bricking the phone, that's a "you" problem.
tavavex · 19m ago
> If the USG decides to pass a law saying you can only buy iPhones, then we will have more to talk about w.r.t. liberty.
Is what the US government does the only concern to you? This feels like a very semantic argument that tries to define the government as the sole arbiter of what's expected in our society. Majority consensus has an equal if not greater reach in telling us what we can and can't do. Case in point: the only two types of smartphones you can reasonably use nowadays are iOS devices and Android devices (and that is Google-sanctioned Android devices, custom ROMs are being rooted out as we speak). Sure, you can technically buy a random dumbphone, and just accept losing access to most of society, including services where using specific apps on specific platforms is mandatory. Is that liberty to you? Everyone telling you that you must pick from one of these options, but you're not forced to at gunpoint, so it's fine?
> Nothing actually prevents you from modifying your iPhone however you see fit, btw. If you are incapable of breaking Apple's security without bricking the phone, that's a "you" problem.
I would agree if we were still in the 2000s, when people could actually plug their phones in and flash whatever firmware they desired on them. Current-day phones, iPhones especially, are black boxes that are designed to be impenetrable by anyone by Apple, under the guise of 'security'. Everything is cross-checked to ensure that you can't as much as screw your phone open without consequences. The threat vectors they're supposedly addressing are utterly ludicrous. It's gotta be stuff like "Oh, what if a malicious actor steals grandma's iPhone, opens it, installs a battery that wasn't blessed by Apple, and explodes it after giving it back to her?".
Everyone knows they're doing this because they want every facet their devices to be in their tight grip, so that you just obtain temporary permission to do some things with it under their watchful eye, as long as you stay in your lane. Best of all, they can just incessantly scream something about "safety", "security" or "integrity" and that will be good enough justification.
And 99% of people don't even have the capacity to care about any of this, they'll just pick "security" and cheer on for any new "secure" update that tightens corporate control over you and what you can do. The 1% is too small of a market to care about, they will just reluctantly use the socially acceptable option because what choice do they have?
SlowTao · 1h ago
Completely agree. This is a general issue with technology in general, if someone uses a new technology to their advantage and at your disadvantage, you are essentially forced to adopt said technology just to keep up. In that sense a lot of technological change isn't voluntary. This also explains why a lot of open source/proprietary software is always chasing each other to keep up.
jrm4 · 23m ago
Technically true, the worst kind of true.
The original phrase is good as is and much better than this nitpicking if we'd like to see actual movement on the issue.
“I should be able to run whatever code I want on hardware I own”
sirjaz · 32m ago
We as tech enthusiasts killed a viable 3rd option. For all its warts Microsoft created a great mobile os, but we killed it. If we could convince them to bring it back to be the true alternative to the existing duopoly in might fix these issues.
ACCount37 · 16m ago
I wouldn't expect Microsoft, of all people, to be a "viable third option". They weren't exactly keen on user freedom either - they aren't now, and they weren't in Windows Phone 7 days.
d_sem · 46m ago
It has never been easier to realize your own open source hardware platform. Those dedicated to freedom can chose to offer alternatives. The challenge is we don't live in a post job society and people need to make money to survive. Until that changes, practical professionals will gravitate towards non-ideal systems that optimize for short term value over freedom.
Tempest1981 · 3h ago
Including cars, TVs, and home appliances -- those are the items I really want to hack.
nicce · 2h ago
And tractors
beambot · 41m ago
The only way this happens is if people & organizations vote with their $$.
My immediate follow-up to people who take this position: Are you using Framework laptops, pinephone or other OSS devices already? If not, then it's just empty air -- vote with your $$.
skeltoac · 1h ago
The situation we have is fine. You can make hardware with features these people want, or you can make hardware with features those people want.
b_e_n_t_o_n · 1h ago
You already have that ability, afaik there is nothing stopping you or your friends from loading and running whatever software you want except your own technical ability.
If you want the government to force other people to do the work to let you have your cake and eat it too, I can't support that.
htrp · 3h ago
You don't own the hardware, it's now a license just like the software..... problem solved.
marcus_holmes · 2h ago
I know I'm going to get downvoted to hell for this, but I genuinely think it's OK for a device manufacturer to say: "we are building this device to run this software. If you don't want to run this software, then don't buy this device. There are plenty of other devices out there that will run other software, you can buy one of those if you want to run other software - our devices are designed to only run our software, and we're only going to support that".
I think that's a huge difference from the sideloading issue, though. Which is effectively saying "you must purchase all your software for this device from us, even if it's not our software, and even if it's available elsewhere for less".
I get how one statement creates the monopoly that allows the other statement, but I think they are still two separate statements.
scosman · 2h ago
+1. Smartphones aren't a monopoly. GrapheneOS is a thing. More companies can build hardware for it if there's demand. Not every piece of hardware needs to be general purpose computer.
I've been delighted to get my parents on iPhone+iPad for simplicity (and they have too). It feels this crowd sometimes assumes every barrier put in place is anti-consumer, but it's not. Blocking access to sensors, limiting background runtime, blocking access to other app's data, limiting it to reviewed apps... are all great things for most people. Most people don't have the technical literacy to have "informed consent" prompts popping up every 5 minutes, and most of them know it too. Most folks don't mind trusting Apple to make the tougher technical calls for them, and actually appreciate it.
Make cool hacker centric hardware. Make cool easy to use, locked down, and foolproof hardware. Both can and should exist.
serf · 2h ago
>There are plenty of other devices out there that will run other software, you can buy one of those if you want to run other software - our devices are designed to only run our software, and we're only going to support tha
except in about a hundred million examples where the niche software that is running on the niche hardware has no viable alternative.
In The Real World when you have a component that breaks somewhere, and the manufacturer of the thing either fails to help or no longer exists you contract a third party to retrofit a repair module of some sort, or you do the work yourself to get the thing working.
How does this principle apply when the producer of the thing booby traps it with encryption and circuit breakers?
Software is special, comparing it to other industries never works well.
marcus_holmes · 1h ago
I agree that there's a difference between just not supporting the device running other software, and actively preventing the device from running other software. The latter doesn't serve anyone.
mixmastamyk · 2h ago
> There are plenty of other devices out there...
No there isn't, and one of the main problems.
SchemaLoad · 1h ago
There are if you are willing to have two devices. One secure phone for banking, phone calls, etc. And a portable linux device for installing whatever you want on. Where installing malware doesn't risk losing all of your money.
mixmastamyk · 42m ago
> secure phone for banking
Secure from the owner doesn't equal security in general.
I know of no reasonable, modern Linux devices besides the Starlite tablet and potentially the Furiphone. And boy, have I looked and looked. But the second has not been around long enough to be reviewed by a reputable entity.
bccdee · 34m ago
> Forcing Apple to change core tenets of iOS by legislative means would undermine what made the iPhone successful.
Even if this is true… so what? Perhaps the App Store monopoly has helped make the iPhone successful, but that doesn't make it a good thing.
> If you want to play Playstation games on your PS5 you must suffer Sony’s restrictions, but if you want to convert your PS5 into an emulator running Linux that should be possible.
Why? What if Sony's restrictions are bad? Why are we ceding corporations the right to treat us however they want, so long as we're using their software?
You shouldn't have to flash a new OS onto your hardware in order for it to respect you as its user & owner. You shouldn't need to be tech-savvy, either. The happy path for the median user should be privacy and freedom.
Free/libre alternatives to consumer software are always going to be second-class, because respecting users is at odds with making money off them. If we people to be treated well by tech, it's not enough to provide an alternative ecosystem. We have to deny corporations the option to treat users badly in the first place.
hedora · 1h ago
I think fighting for the ability to write a custom OS for a phone misses the point.
It should be possible to participate in the modern economy using standard technology.
To this end, I think there should be a mandate that all govt and commercial infrastructure apps offer a progressive web app with at least feature parity with proprietary phone apps.
Want me to use a phone to pay for lunch, EV charging, parking or a toll? Great. It needs to be doable with anything running firefox, safari or chrome.
trinsic2 · 39m ago
> When Google restricts your ability to install certain applications they aren’t constraining what you can do with the hardware you own, they are constraining what you can do using the software they provide with said hardware.
No. Incorrect. Because the argument that we should be focusing on software is a distraction. They use restricting the OS as an argument to restrict the Hardware. Their is pressure put on on hardware devs to toe this line.
You can see this with secure enclaves. If they didn't care about what software was running on their hardware, they wouldn't be designing hardware to restrict the kind of OS you can run on the hardware. Secure Boot/UEFI is going in that direction and Mobile devices are already there to some extent.
This whole argument is a distraction designed to lure people away from the real problem. That all technology (Hardware and Software) is being designed to restrict freedoms. If you are focus on this distraction, you are missing the point.
SilverElfin · 1h ago
Absolutely must have the right to run any software on hardware we own. It should be mandated for hardware built by large companies, who are soaking up the capital and labor that’s available. It’s sensible regulation.
hereme888 · 3h ago
I'm two days into switching my Pixel 6 from Android to GrapheneOS. No issues so far. I haven't set up my banking app, but it's supposed to be supported.
kogasa240p · 1h ago
Interesting perspective but unfortunately with smartphones you'll have cellular carriers lock down their bootloaders because of bogus "security" reasons.
Why not launch a new startup focused on building an open smartphone? This is HN after all, with the right pitch someone will throw money at it.
mensetmanusman · 1h ago
Run doom on my Air conditioner?
andy99 · 3h ago
I don't think government should be involved here, but what they can do is (a) always provide alternatives where interacting with government doesn't require a smartphone or apps, and (b) mandate the same for regulated or essential industries like banks and airlines etc.
I'm not convinced there is some inalienable right to load an OS onto any hardware but said hardware/OS should never be on the critical path to anything a citizen needs to do.
yesbut · 2h ago
If left to the generosity of companies to allow us to control the hardware we purchase then we will never be able to modify the hardware we purchase again. There are no inalienable rights that we, as humans, do not define and legislate ourselves. If we want unfettered control of the hardware that we purchase then we need to codify it into law.
Nursie · 2h ago
I want my less tech savvy family members to be able to buy locked-to-the-company-store hardware, that they can’t run other things on, as it protects them from one avenue of scams and hacks. This protection can and will be worked around if it can be easily disabled.
Fully open phone systems consistently fail to sell enough to make a difference, which is a bit of a shame, but honestly at this point the market has spoken.
hoppp · 1h ago
That is understandable, most people are not technical but the few who has a need for it should have an option for it.
As a developer I write apps for myself and I side-load them. Why take away my right to do so, just because other people can't then nobody should?
tamimio · 2h ago
Not defending Apple, but when they restrict sideloading it's because they made both the software and the hardware. They didn't exploit thousands of open source developers who basically worked for free making Android what it is right now, only to be hijacked by Google. I used to use Android but I did notice a huge decline around 2015, which was around the time when the Android creator left Google.
sciencesama · 2h ago
Cuda disagrees with you !
anothernewdude · 3h ago
If sideloading goes, so does their OS.
surajrmal · 2h ago
What are you planning to use instead?
otikik · 2h ago
That doesn’t benefit the corporations, so it’s communism.
add-sub-mul-div · 2h ago
As for the new Android restrictions I assume my Galaxy S20 will be immune to them because it's not getting (major) updates anymore. I'll continue using it as long as I can to avoid this. Does anyone know the most recent Galaxy phone that will be safe from this? I want to get a backup.
odo1242 · 14m ago
It likely won't be safe - they're probably going to enforce it through a Google Play Services update rather than an Android update, which means all previous Android OS versions after 5.0 (Lollipop, released in 2014) will be hit with the changes. In order to bypass that you'd need to install a Custom ROM or stop using and uninstall the Google Play Store entirely (since it's not possible to selectively disable just this).
Android uses Google Play Services updates to update some features or security without relying on manufacturers to update the OS and drivers.
micromacrofoot · 2h ago
tbh I don't even care about support, just give me the keys
but ultimately it doesn't matter, if the market could bear the additional cost a competitor could emerge... but they barely do anywhere
honestly at this point in life I think it would be easier to change society to be structured in a way to make the people running these companies want to give it to you
yesbut · 3h ago
Anyone who doesn't agree with this is a collaborator and should be publicly shamed.
DrillShopper · 3h ago
No, says the man in Hollywood - those cycles belong to the MPAA
No, says the car manufacturers, those cycles belong to us
No, says the nerds in Redmond, your computer belongs to us
add-sub-mul-div · 3h ago
Weird last example, Windows is freer than Apple/Google. There's no path to locking down Windows like Android or iOS, half the world would break. Apple originated and normalized this, Google is following.
Spooky23 · 2h ago
Microsoft will absolutely go down this path, they just have longer commitments and product cycles.
I’d guess in 5 years you’ll start getting friction for using AD, and heavy push towards cloud services first. You’ll probably have to subscribe to legacy features or migrate to Azure to use them.
Their legacy systems management tool is a zombie product, and the replacement is Intune, which and an MDM solution which locks you out of your computer similar to Android or iOS.
I’ll be retired, so IDNGAF, but in 15 years, Microsoft will be capturing all of the value they give you for free in windows. The future will look like a 1980s mainframe.
rogerrogerr · 2h ago
A few weeks ago someone was posting links to a thing MS is trying to push, which would require signed code for local execution. It had a weird name but seemed like they’re trying.
Krutonium · 2h ago
Windows 10/11 S is that path. Microsoft has walked it already; They just have to push the net wider over time.
fijiaarone · 1h ago
We’ve got a solution to that.
What makes you think you can own hardware, you fascist capitalist pig dog!
mikewarot · 1h ago
A gentle reminder to the readers here at HN that it doesn't have to be this way. Computer Security is a solved problem[1], and has been so since the 1980s[2].
It's my strong opinion that the only methods you've seen to this point[3-7] were deliberately chosen to be ones that don't work, and make things worse in the long run.
There's no reason we shouldn't be able to run what we want on our hardware, without having to trust anything other than the microkernel inside the operating systems.
Your opinion is not "a gentle reminder", "a friendly reminder" or "a public service announcement". It's just your opinion and nothing more.
7373737373 · 1h ago
It's obvious you don't understand what is written in those links. The capability security architecture breaks the false dichotomy of either having to have a fully locked down or open operating system, it provides the technical foundation to grant individual programs, and even parts of these programs, recursively, only the (data, filesystem, network) access and resource consumption (cpu, memory) rights that they need. This is not an opinion, this is a decades old technical solution that humanity ignores at its own peril. While I wouldn't argue that it completely solves computer security, it allows programmers and users to minimize the attack surface of their systems.
fareesh · 2h ago
the Android change doesn't impact your ability to plug in your own device and run your own code or someone else's code
the change impacts closed source software distributed without verification which is by definition unknown so the "want" is not possible - i.e. you can't know if you want to run it.
abtinf · 3h ago
I can only assume that folks making this argument didn't live through the bad old days, 15+ years ago.
Sometimes, I want wide open hardware that lets me do whatever I want. Innumerable companies serve this need.
Other times (indeed, most times) I want locked down hardware because of the massive benefits. That's why I use macs and iphones, and strongly advocate others use them too.
Yet a bunch of assholes want to rip that option away from me.
i80and · 3h ago
I was there, Gandalf, 15 years ago. I think the last virus I saw in person was closer to 25 years ago, but I've done my time in the trenches.
Locked-down app stores certainly have significant utility and even should maybe be the default depending on the device, but calling people "assholes" for asking for an escape hatch is extremely odd.
No comments yet
sverhagen · 3h ago
Do you want locked down hardware, or are you accepting the locked down hardware because you don't care about it either way, but are otherwise happy (very happy perhaps even) with what those platforms offer? But why can't we have both?
marak830 · 3h ago
This. Abtinf's solution changes how I can use hardware. But me being able to install what I want does not change theirs.
You guys keep not installing what you don't want - that's fine and your choice - but don't remove mine for no reason.
sesky · 2h ago
This is not true. A walled garden only works well when it applies universally.
When app developers have the ability to bypass the walled garden, they have many incentives to do so ranging from financial to wishing to circumvent scrutiny. This will include an increasing amount of popular and useful apps, decreasing the options available to those who want to stay in the walled garden. For less technical users they will blindly follow instructions to leave the walled garden.
You are removing the choice of users who want a walled garden by supporting legislation forcing these ecosystems open.
littlecosmic · 1h ago
Alternatively it just puts pressure on the walled garden to let people do what that want to do safely within the walls so they don’t have to go through the escape hatch.
slug · 3h ago
What bad old days? 15 years ago we had n700, n800 and n900 to run whatever we wanted on a portable device.
It's not a binary choice though. We have the technology for an OS to enable sideloading for people who want it and disable it for people who don't...
hedora · 1h ago
Surely, a bunch of assholes want to install software on your phone without your consent, but WTF does that have to do with this conversation, which is about letting you install software on your own phone?
nzeid · 3h ago
This is confusing. No one (I know) who zealously supports open hardware also thinks that "closed ecosystem" software should be eliminated or undermined.
Making hardware friendly to multiple implementations is good for everyone.
blooalien · 2h ago
> "Making hardware friendly to multiple implementations is good for everyone."
Yeah, it's called "competition", which time and again throughout history has proven to force all involved parties to improve or perish (good for everyone; at least the "improve" part). Lack of any has proven to foster "enshittification" to the most extreme levels (absolutely bad for everyone).
stale2002 · 1h ago
> I want locked down hardware because of the massive benefits.
> want to rip that option away from me.
You would be free to have that option. Just like everyone else would be free to own the same hardware and escape the walled garden. Nobody would force you to unlock your device. Just keep it locked down. Other people freeing their own hardware has nothing to do with your choice.
It doesn't work. Everything from banks to Netflix and others are slowly edging out anything where they can't fully verify the chain of control to an entity they can have a legal or contractual relationship with. To be clear, this is fundamental, not incidental. You can't run your own operating system because it's not in Netflix's financial interest for you to do so. Or your banks, or your government. They all benefit from you not having control, so you can't.
This is why it's so important to defend the real principles here not just the technical artefacts of them. Netflix shouldn't be able to insist on a particular type of DRM for me to receive their service. Governments shouldn't be able to prevent me from end to end encrypting things. I should be able to opt into all this if I want more security, but it can't be mandatory. However all of these things are not technical, they are principles and rights that we have to argue for.
power asymmetry
While it would be a burden to require a degree of openness, it's not like companies are all rugged individualists who would never want to see legal restrictions in the field.
It's just a question of what is overall best and fairest.
Restrictions can both help and hinder innovation, and it's innovation that in the ling run makes things improve IMO.
Yep. They control our information - how we make it, what we are allowed to find, and what we can say. And they are large enough to not face real competition. So let’s treat them like the state owned corporations they are and regulate heavily. Smaller companies can be left unregulated. But not companies worth 500 billion or more.
And that is what is wrong here. Even the smallest nation should be far more powerful than the largest corporation. But corporations are now more powerful than most nations, including some really big ones. So the only way to solve this is to for an umbrella for nations that offsets the power that these corporations have.
The first thing you notice when you arrive at Brussels airport is the absolute barrage of Google advertising that tries to convince you that Google is doing everything they can to play by the rules. When it is of course doing the exact opposite. So at least Google seems to realize that smaller nations banding together wield power. But they will never wield it as effectively as a company can, so we still have many problems.
Since nations can be really small, I don't agree.
To push further, Google and Apple have basically as much power as the US.
The UK going after Apple, only to get rebutted by the US is the most simple instance of it. International treaties pushed by the US strongly protecting it's top corporations is the more standard behavior.
Any entity fighting the duopoly is effectively getting into a fight with the US.
If this is true then why is Tim Cook visiting Trump? Shouldn’t it be the other way around.
Sometimes owner control, cf. corporate control, can be had by sacrificing hardware functionality, i.e., features, closed source drivers. Choice between particular hardware feature(s) working and control over the hardware in general.
Apple and Google are still a problem, but they are a secondary problem.
The problem right now is that even if I had a couple of million dollars lying around, I STILL couldn't reliably get a piece of hardware certified for the cellular network. I would have to set up a company, spend untold amounts of money bribing^Wwooing cellular company executives for a couple years, and, maybe, just maybe, I could get my phone through the certification process.
The technical aspects of certification are the easy part.
The problem is that the cellular companies fully understand that when it happens their power goes to zero because they suddenly become a dumb pipe that everybody just wants to ignore.
That's why this will take legislation.
The sheer technical difficulty is what makes this kind of thing impractical.
The network does validate that a SIM card is a real SIM card, but you can put a "real SIM card" in anything.
The M1 Macbook Air is 5 years old now, has an active development, lots of community funding and attention, yet is still missing basic functionality like external monitors and video decoding. Because it's just a mammoth task to support modern hardware. Unless you have a whole paid team on it you've got no hope.
It should be able to make an OS. It should be able to write drivers. It should be able to port code to new platforms. It should be able to transpile compiled binaries (which are just languages of a different language) across architectures.
Sure seems we are very far from that, but really these are breadth-based knowledge with extensive examples / training sources. It SHOULD be something LLMs are good at, not new/novel/deep/difficult problems. What I described are labor-intensive and complicated, but not "difficult".
And would any corporate AI allow that?
We should be pretty paranoid about centralized control attempts, especially in tech. This is a ... fragile ... time.
You can feed it assembly listings, or bytecode that the decompiler couldn't handle, and get back solid results.
And corporate AIs don't really have a fuck to give, at least not yet. You can sic Claude on obvious decompiler outputs, or a repo of questionable sources with a "VERY BIG CORPO - PROPRIETARY AND CONFIDENTIAL" in every single file, and it'll sift through it - no complaints, no questions asked. And if that data somehow circles back into the training eventually, then all the funnier.
I haven't heard much from the major projects yet, but I'm not ear-to-the-ground.
I guess that is what is disappointing. It's all (to quote n-gage) webshit you see being used for this, and corpo-code so far, to your point.
1. Open, hackable hardware for those who want full control and for driving innovation
2. Locked-down, managed devices for vulnerable users who benefit from protection
This concept of "I should run any code on hardware I own" is completely wrong as a universal principle. Yes, we absolutely should be able to run any code we want on open hardware we own - that option must exist. But we should not expect manufacturers of phones and tablets to allow anyone to run any code on every device, since this will cause harm to many users.
There should be more open and hackable products available in the market. The DIY mindset at the junction of hardware and software is crucial for tech innovation - we wouldn't be where we are today without it. However, I also want regulations and restrictions on the phones I buy for my kids and grandparents. They need protection from themselves and from bad actors.
The market should serve both groups: those who want to tinker and innovate, and those who need a safe, managed experience. The problem isn't that locked-down devices exist - it's that we don't have enough truly open alternatives for those who want them.
Choice 2. Empowered user. The end user is free to CHOOSE to delegate the hardware's approved signing solutions to a third party. Possibly even a third party that is already included in the base firmware such as Microsoft, Apple, OEM, 'Open Source' (sub menu: List of several reputable distros and a choice which might have a big scary message and involved confirmation process to trust the inserted boot media or the URL the user typed in...)
There should also be a reset option, which might involve a jumper or physical key (E.G. clear CMOS) that factory resets any TPM / persistent storage. Yes it'd nuke everything in the enclave but it would release the hardware.
Never give up your freedom.
If you have to give up your privacy to ensure your freedom, so be it.
If you have to give up your security to ensure your privacy, so be it.
This goes for governments and phones.
Apple does not have the ability to throw me in prison or take away my freedoms. Only to not grant me extra freedoms subsidized by their R&D budget.
Their R&D budget is at the expense of a free market that would have delivered the same or better products.
Did you ever see how wild and innovative the Japanese mobile phones were before iPhone monoculture took over?
I want crazy stuff like a smartphone that has the form factor of a Raspberry Pi. Or a smartphone with e-Ink. Crazy new categories of devices.
Sadly, the Apple/Google monopoly has turned smartphones into one of the shittiest, most locked down device categories. It's a death place for innovation.
If you do decide to buy their products, nothing has changed since the day of your purchase, so they haven’t taken away anything from you.
Their “monoculture” didn’t “take hold” - it beat the Japanese offerings through innovation and a better product.
They operate in a free market, their R&D budget is made possible by their market success. If things change in the market (e.g. AI) the market will vote the way it always does.
The market is now so depressed that everyone has to jump through these companies' hoops to participate in the most important computing form factor in the world.
Don't apologize for trillion dollar hyperscalers. They don't need your love, adoration, or apology. They do not care about you at all.
Too much power has accrued to these two and it's being leveraged against all of society and the open market. Competition is supposed to be difficult, ruthless, challenging, and frenetic. I see two companies resting on their laurels that are happy to tax us into the next century while we wear their little straightjackets.
Reality is that people pay a lot of money because they 'trust' Apple (and to a lesser extent Google), but Meta is the sleaziest one of them all. (And I don't use their shit either.) But people want Whatapp and Instagram, and so you are telling them now they have sell-out and go to the "Meta App Store" to talk to their friends. That fucking sucks. And I think you agree with that.
We need a mobile bill of rights for this stuff.
- The devices all of society has standardized upon should not be owned by companies after purchase.
- The devices all of society has standardized upon should not have transactions be taxed by the companies that make them, nor have their activities monitored by the companies that make them. (Gaming consoles are very different than devices we use to do banking and read menus at restaurants.)
- The devices all of society has standardized upon should not enforce rules for downstream software apart from heuristic scanning for viruses/abuse and strong security/permissions sandboxing that the user themselves controls.
- The devices all of society has standardized upon should be strictly regulated by governments all around the world to ensure citizens and businesses cannot be strong-armed.
- The devices all of society has standardized upon should be a burden for the limited few companies that gate keep them.
Open question:
Any idea on making it so difficult that grandma isn't even able to follow a phisher’s instructions over the phone but yet nearly trivial for anyone who knows what they’re doing?
Then you put grandma's device in closed mode and explicitly tell her never to do the scary thing that takes it back out again and call you immediately if anyone asks her to. Or, for someone who is not competent to follow that simple instruction (e.g. small children or senile adults), you make the factory reset require a password and then don't give it to them.
I’m sure I’m missing a problem with the following approach: shipping in _closed_ mode with a sticker on the front notifying the person they should do a factory reset immediately to make sure they can do everything they want to do. During the reset, include a scary message for those who opt in to get to open mode.
Everyone simply goes by defaults so it would only be technical people presumably who would even get into the open mode in the first place. And then require the debugger to leave closed mode like you said.
Edit: this comment worries about solo/asocial/“orphaned” members of our society
There is no reason anyone purporting to be from a business or the government should be able to place a call without cryptographically proving their identity.
And presumably we could set up notifications so our elderly relatives’ phones would alert us to calls from unverified numbers not in their contact list lasting longer than a minute or two.
False positives from PC virus scanners are very rare.
The problems is that vendors use "locked down devices" as an excuse to limit competition.
Suppose you have a "locked down" device that can only install apps from official sources, but "official sources" means Apple, Google, Samsung or Amazon. Moreover, you can disable any of these if you want to (requiring a factory reset to re-enable), but Google or Apple can't unilaterally insist that you can't use Amazon, or for that matter F-Droid etc.
Let the owner of the device lock it down as much as they want. Do not let the vendor do this when the owner doesn't want it.
Not for lack of trying. See for yourself
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open-source_mobile_p...
The list is not short.
Plenty of companies have attempted this over the years but it’s not obvious that a big enough customer base exists to support the tremendous number of engineering hours it takes to make a phone. Making a decent smart phone is really hard. And the operations needed to support production isn’t cheap either.
My hardware. My decision.
Open hardware is essentially useless if I need to carry both an open phone and a phone with the parking app, the banking app, messenger app to contact friends, etc.
Grandma and grandpa aren't reading the source code and certainly not up at a professional level. This is one of the core misconceptions of the "free/libre" formulation of OSS.
This is one of the core misconceptions of the anti "free/libre" formulation of OSS. Most users don't need to read the entire Debian source to know that it is safe to use. You are free to look up who maintains any part of the project and look at the history of changes that have been made. A lot of projects have nice, easy to read notes along with the actual code.
If you are so paranoid that you can't even trust open release notes then why would you trust a closed project at all?
More users != more contributors. As software gets more popular, you begin getting 10, 100, 1000, 1,000,000 users for every contributor.
This doesn't just affect non-programmers. We can't even police NPM.
People want it to be true so that it will be a talking point, but it's not true, and we need to find new talking points that align with facts that are evident outside the echo chambers.
Citation needed. Seriously.
I could make the same argument about MongoDB of a decade ago implying that all open source is trash...
I would argue most code of any license is not actually regularly audited if at all, and certainly nowhere near the levels people seem to think they are.
> We all know that most commercial code is much shittier than open source
citation needed
Every device should run OpenBSD. And only the audited part.
Thats fine! Just make sure it is possible for someone to take the same device and remove the locked down protections.
Make it require a difficult/obvious factory reset to enable, if you are concerned about someone being "tricked" into turning off the lockdown.
If someone wants baby mode on, all power too them! Thats their choice. Just like it should be everyone else's choice to own the same hardware and turn it off.
Is there also a way to make it obvious to the user that a device is running non-OEM software? For example, imagine someone intercepts a new device parcel, flashes spyware on it, then delivers it in similar/the same packaging unbeknownst to the end user. The same could be said for second-hand/used devices.
It's potentially possible the bootrom/uefi/etc bootup process shows some warning for x seconds on each boot that non-OEM software is loaded, but for that to happen you need to be locked out of being able to flash your own bootrom to the device.
As someone who enjoyed Linux phones like the Nokia N900/950 and would love to see those hacker-spirited devices again, statements like this sound more than naïve to me. I can acknowledge my own interests here (having control over how exactly the device I own runs), but I can also see the interests of phone manufacturers — protecting revenue streams, managing liability and regulatory risks, optimizing hardware–software integration, and so on. I don't see how my own interests here outweigh collective interests here.
I also don’t see Apple or Google as merely companies that assemble parts and selling us "hardware". The decades when hardware and software were two disconnected worlds are gone.
Reading technical documentation on things like secure enclaves, UWB chips, computational photography stack, HRTF tuning, unified memory, TrueDepth cameras, AWDL, etc., it feels very wrong to support claims like the OP makes. “Hardware I own” sounds like you bought a pan and demand the right to cook any food you want. But we’re not buying pans anymore — we’re buying airplanes that also happen to serve food.
(Hell: I'd personally be OK without "documentation"... it should simply be illegal to actively go out of your way to prevent people from doing this. This way you also aren't mandating anyone go to extra effort they otherwise wouldn't bother with: the status quo is that, because they can, they thrown down an incredible amount of effort trying to prevent people from figuring things out themselves, and that really sucks.)
heh.
However the interests you mention aren't collective at all but very singularly the ones of the manufacturer only
And there should also be the right to be able to opt out of the manufacturers' protections of course.
> There are many ways to protect security, leaving all your keys in the hands of one party is not the only one.
When youre dealing with idiots its a bit harder than you might expect. Tons of idiots own phones and if apple allowed them to be the victim of security vulnerabilities they get terrible pr.
Or worse, blow them up.
Will it be as good as the iOS implementation? Probably not. But it's hardly an impossible fact and not one that has to be done entirely over and over for every device. The Asahi folks showed it could be done despite hostile conditions.
Actually enforcing the anti-monopoly rules on the books would help, too.
And while we're making wishes, we could kill the VC-backed tech play by enforcing a digital version of anti-dumping laws.
With those rules in place, we'd see our market engine quite a bit more aligned with the social good.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy)
If a manufacturer makes a device locked down, it's the technological protections preventing you from running your own code. Not IP/copyright. Sometimes they get jailbroken but sometimes not.
However, I strongly believe that - should one choose to do so - you should not be stopped from jailbreaking, cracking, etc. manufacturer restrictions on the hardware you own. Companies aren't obligated to support me doing this - but why should legislation stop me if I want to try? (You can easily guess my thoughts on the DMCA.)
Where does one draw the line on support? If I jailbreak an iPhone, should I still get Apple customer support for the apps on it, even though they may have been manipulated by some aspect of the jailbreak? (Very real problem, easy to cause crashes in other apps when you mess around with root access) Should I still get a battery replacement within warranty from Apple even though I've used software that runs the battery hotter and faster than it would on average on a non-jailbroken iPhone?
I feel like changing the software shouldn't void your warranty, but I can see arguments against that. I probably fall on the side of losing all software support if you make changes like this, but even then it's not clear cut.
I’ve given talks on how various jailbreak exploits work in order to teach people how to protect their own software but also with the suggestion that we should be able to do this.
It’s nuts that personal computers aren’t personal anymore. Devices you might not think of as PC’s… just are. They’re sold in slick hardware. And the software ecosystem tries to prevent tampering in the name of security… but it’s not security for the end user most of the time. It’s security for the investors to ensure you have to keep paying them.
That’s why I love my iPhone, but I’m not super happy about what happens with my Mac.
There’s something in the reality that it’s the app developers not the user that are being restricted by Apple. Apple keeps the app developers from doing things I don’t like for the most part. I don’t feel very restricted.
But I don’t want my computer to become a walled garden. It’s only OK for my phone.
Makes me think that google did this now since trump has been criticizing the DMA, so now they feel empowered by their leader to break the law
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These things are never thought through. Sure, Apple could unlock the whole thing, tell everyone to go nuts. Who's writing the damn drivers? Apple's certainly not obligated to open source theirs, I also can't imagine them signing someone else's. So we end up with a bunch of homebrew drivers, devices crashing, getting pwned, and the dozens of people who install a third party OS on their iPhone write furious articles that get voted up to the front page of HN.
https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/articles/104924762388...
https://www.fairphone.com/
The key is that if you choose not to run that software, your hardware should not be constrained. You own the hardware, it's a tangible thing that is your property.
Boils down to a consumer rights issue that I fall on the same side of as the author.
Also worrisome are e-fuses, which allow software to make irrevocable physical changes to your hardware. They shouldn't be allowed to be modified except by the owner. (See Nintendo Switch updates blowing e-fuses to prevent downgrades.)
Obviously the parent commenter believes you should be able to exploit your own device and downgrade the OS if you wish.
The smartphone does not consist of just one processor, it's a collection of dedicated processors, each running custom algorithms locally. Sure, there's software running in the application layer, but it's playing more of a coordination role than actually doing the work. Just think of sending a packet over the internet and how different it is between a smartphone and a computer, how much more complex a cellular modem is compared to a network card.
It's less about software now and more about hardware accelerated modules. Even CPUs run primarily on microcode which can be patched after the fact.
These patterns are cyclical. It will take a number of years before we return to standardized compute again, but return we will. Eventually.
In practice, a whole lot software would have to be open source too so that the hardware is reasonably usable. The layers you'd need to let an iPhone run android well, or a Pixel phone to run iOS are not small.
If they just wanted hardware, they could buy their own and piece something together, if we're exploring those kinds of hypotheticals. But buying an Apple or Android device is a different choice and I think, within that context, a user should be able to run the software they want.
Buy a more open phone if you want one, but stop trying to use legal means to force the software on my phone to be worse for my use-case just because you want to have your cake and eat it too.
If the USG decides to pass a law saying you can only buy iPhones, then we will have more to talk about w.r.t. liberty.
Nothing actually prevents you from modifying your iPhone however you see fit, btw. If you are incapable of breaking Apple's security without bricking the phone, that's a "you" problem.
Is what the US government does the only concern to you? This feels like a very semantic argument that tries to define the government as the sole arbiter of what's expected in our society. Majority consensus has an equal if not greater reach in telling us what we can and can't do. Case in point: the only two types of smartphones you can reasonably use nowadays are iOS devices and Android devices (and that is Google-sanctioned Android devices, custom ROMs are being rooted out as we speak). Sure, you can technically buy a random dumbphone, and just accept losing access to most of society, including services where using specific apps on specific platforms is mandatory. Is that liberty to you? Everyone telling you that you must pick from one of these options, but you're not forced to at gunpoint, so it's fine?
> Nothing actually prevents you from modifying your iPhone however you see fit, btw. If you are incapable of breaking Apple's security without bricking the phone, that's a "you" problem.
I would agree if we were still in the 2000s, when people could actually plug their phones in and flash whatever firmware they desired on them. Current-day phones, iPhones especially, are black boxes that are designed to be impenetrable by anyone by Apple, under the guise of 'security'. Everything is cross-checked to ensure that you can't as much as screw your phone open without consequences. The threat vectors they're supposedly addressing are utterly ludicrous. It's gotta be stuff like "Oh, what if a malicious actor steals grandma's iPhone, opens it, installs a battery that wasn't blessed by Apple, and explodes it after giving it back to her?".
Everyone knows they're doing this because they want every facet their devices to be in their tight grip, so that you just obtain temporary permission to do some things with it under their watchful eye, as long as you stay in your lane. Best of all, they can just incessantly scream something about "safety", "security" or "integrity" and that will be good enough justification.
And 99% of people don't even have the capacity to care about any of this, they'll just pick "security" and cheer on for any new "secure" update that tightens corporate control over you and what you can do. The 1% is too small of a market to care about, they will just reluctantly use the socially acceptable option because what choice do they have?
The original phrase is good as is and much better than this nitpicking if we'd like to see actual movement on the issue.
“I should be able to run whatever code I want on hardware I own”
My immediate follow-up to people who take this position: Are you using Framework laptops, pinephone or other OSS devices already? If not, then it's just empty air -- vote with your $$.
If you want the government to force other people to do the work to let you have your cake and eat it too, I can't support that.
I think that's a huge difference from the sideloading issue, though. Which is effectively saying "you must purchase all your software for this device from us, even if it's not our software, and even if it's available elsewhere for less".
I get how one statement creates the monopoly that allows the other statement, but I think they are still two separate statements.
I've been delighted to get my parents on iPhone+iPad for simplicity (and they have too). It feels this crowd sometimes assumes every barrier put in place is anti-consumer, but it's not. Blocking access to sensors, limiting background runtime, blocking access to other app's data, limiting it to reviewed apps... are all great things for most people. Most people don't have the technical literacy to have "informed consent" prompts popping up every 5 minutes, and most of them know it too. Most folks don't mind trusting Apple to make the tougher technical calls for them, and actually appreciate it.
Make cool hacker centric hardware. Make cool easy to use, locked down, and foolproof hardware. Both can and should exist.
except in about a hundred million examples where the niche software that is running on the niche hardware has no viable alternative.
In The Real World when you have a component that breaks somewhere, and the manufacturer of the thing either fails to help or no longer exists you contract a third party to retrofit a repair module of some sort, or you do the work yourself to get the thing working.
How does this principle apply when the producer of the thing booby traps it with encryption and circuit breakers?
Software is special, comparing it to other industries never works well.
No there isn't, and one of the main problems.
Secure from the owner doesn't equal security in general.
I know of no reasonable, modern Linux devices besides the Starlite tablet and potentially the Furiphone. And boy, have I looked and looked. But the second has not been around long enough to be reviewed by a reputable entity.
Even if this is true… so what? Perhaps the App Store monopoly has helped make the iPhone successful, but that doesn't make it a good thing.
> If you want to play Playstation games on your PS5 you must suffer Sony’s restrictions, but if you want to convert your PS5 into an emulator running Linux that should be possible.
Why? What if Sony's restrictions are bad? Why are we ceding corporations the right to treat us however they want, so long as we're using their software?
You shouldn't have to flash a new OS onto your hardware in order for it to respect you as its user & owner. You shouldn't need to be tech-savvy, either. The happy path for the median user should be privacy and freedom.
Free/libre alternatives to consumer software are always going to be second-class, because respecting users is at odds with making money off them. If we people to be treated well by tech, it's not enough to provide an alternative ecosystem. We have to deny corporations the option to treat users badly in the first place.
It should be possible to participate in the modern economy using standard technology.
To this end, I think there should be a mandate that all govt and commercial infrastructure apps offer a progressive web app with at least feature parity with proprietary phone apps.
Want me to use a phone to pay for lunch, EV charging, parking or a toll? Great. It needs to be doable with anything running firefox, safari or chrome.
No. Incorrect. Because the argument that we should be focusing on software is a distraction. They use restricting the OS as an argument to restrict the Hardware. Their is pressure put on on hardware devs to toe this line.
You can see this with secure enclaves. If they didn't care about what software was running on their hardware, they wouldn't be designing hardware to restrict the kind of OS you can run on the hardware. Secure Boot/UEFI is going in that direction and Mobile devices are already there to some extent.
This whole argument is a distraction designed to lure people away from the real problem. That all technology (Hardware and Software) is being designed to restrict freedoms. If you are focus on this distraction, you are missing the point.
I'm not convinced there is some inalienable right to load an OS onto any hardware but said hardware/OS should never be on the critical path to anything a citizen needs to do.
Fully open phone systems consistently fail to sell enough to make a difference, which is a bit of a shame, but honestly at this point the market has spoken.
As a developer I write apps for myself and I side-load them. Why take away my right to do so, just because other people can't then nobody should?
Android uses Google Play Services updates to update some features or security without relying on manufacturers to update the OS and drivers.
but ultimately it doesn't matter, if the market could bear the additional cost a competitor could emerge... but they barely do anywhere
honestly at this point in life I think it would be easier to change society to be structured in a way to make the people running these companies want to give it to you
No, says the car manufacturers, those cycles belong to us
No, says the nerds in Redmond, your computer belongs to us
I’d guess in 5 years you’ll start getting friction for using AD, and heavy push towards cloud services first. You’ll probably have to subscribe to legacy features or migrate to Azure to use them.
Their legacy systems management tool is a zombie product, and the replacement is Intune, which and an MDM solution which locks you out of your computer similar to Android or iOS.
I’ll be retired, so IDNGAF, but in 15 years, Microsoft will be capturing all of the value they give you for free in windows. The future will look like a 1980s mainframe.
What makes you think you can own hardware, you fascist capitalist pig dog!
There's no reason we shouldn't be able to run what we want on our hardware, without having to trust anything other than the microkernel inside the operating systems.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability-based_security
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability-based_operating_sys...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_Account_Control
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppArmor
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security-Enhanced_Linux
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_permissions
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Platform_Module
the change impacts closed source software distributed without verification which is by definition unknown so the "want" is not possible - i.e. you can't know if you want to run it.
Sometimes, I want wide open hardware that lets me do whatever I want. Innumerable companies serve this need.
Other times (indeed, most times) I want locked down hardware because of the massive benefits. That's why I use macs and iphones, and strongly advocate others use them too.
Yet a bunch of assholes want to rip that option away from me.
Locked-down app stores certainly have significant utility and even should maybe be the default depending on the device, but calling people "assholes" for asking for an escape hatch is extremely odd.
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You guys keep not installing what you don't want - that's fine and your choice - but don't remove mine for no reason.
When app developers have the ability to bypass the walled garden, they have many incentives to do so ranging from financial to wishing to circumvent scrutiny. This will include an increasing amount of popular and useful apps, decreasing the options available to those who want to stay in the walled garden. For less technical users they will blindly follow instructions to leave the walled garden.
You are removing the choice of users who want a walled garden by supporting legislation forcing these ecosystems open.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N700_Series_Shinkansen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N800 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N900
Making hardware friendly to multiple implementations is good for everyone.
Yeah, it's called "competition", which time and again throughout history has proven to force all involved parties to improve or perish (good for everyone; at least the "improve" part). Lack of any has proven to foster "enshittification" to the most extreme levels (absolutely bad for everyone).
> want to rip that option away from me.
You would be free to have that option. Just like everyone else would be free to own the same hardware and escape the walled garden. Nobody would force you to unlock your device. Just keep it locked down. Other people freeing their own hardware has nothing to do with your choice.