alt Hacker NewsIt'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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.)