alt Hacker News> What are we talking about exactly?
About your claim that ownership as a concept is black and white, and no middle ground should be allowed.
> I don't understand what's so complicated about this, or why anyone would argue against this.
It's hard to understand the world if you see things through a binary lens - no ownership vs full ownership, or total support vs outright rejection. A more useful framework is to see what people support, reject, and tolerate.
For example, I totally support open-source hardware and software, and would love to see more of it. But I also tolerate proprietary hardware and software stacks, for many reasons. I'm definitely not rejecting the concept of private companies making hardware that runs their proprietary software and taking control over decisions about what software should run on their hardware.
From your comments, I see that you also support what I support, but you're totally rejecting the idea of hardware that runs proprietary software or not allowing you to run your own. So these calls for the government to step in and force private companies to disallow that concept are something I definitely can't support.
>A more useful framework is to see what people support, reject, and tolerate.
It's certainly more useful for those who want to take what's yours.
>I'm definitely not rejecting the concept of private companies making hardware that runs their proprietary software and taking control over decisions about what software should run on their hardware.
What "their" hardware? It's not their hardware, it's your hardware! You didn't lease it, you didn't borrow it; you bought it outright. On top of that, it's running on your electricity. If you let someone else tell your hardware what it is or isn't allowed to do, you're just a fool. Congratulations, you paid money to give a conglomerate of corporations permission to run software on your premises, on your dime. What a deal! Hey, wanna buy my game console? Just put it in your home with access to the Internet and once in a while I'll let you play a game on it, provided it's been "idling" enough for my tastes.
>but you're totally rejecting the idea of hardware that runs proprietary software
No I'm not. I'm not even arguing that we should be able to change the OS. Honestly, I don't think that's that important. But we shouldn't accept not being able to even install any application software we want. What's even the point of it being a computer at that point?