alt Hacker NewsVery 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
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.