> Also, in case you didn't know, there's been a lot of thought and effort expended over the decades about the philosophy, morals and implementation of ownership with regards to hardware and software. I recommend starting with a resource like
http://www.gnu.org/philosophyI'm very aware.
Also, in case you didn't know, to imply morality or correctness of a philosophy simply because some n individuals spent y time thinking about it is a logical fallacy.
The GNU philosophy is great when you want to wax poetic about a technological utopia, but it simply falls flat when you try to apply it in reality.
In the modern, interconnected world, it is technically trivial to compromise and marshal many thousands of devices to use in co-ordinated attacks. I simply do not trust other users, regardless of their technical aptitude, to maintain a secure posture, and they have no obligation or responsibility(outside of a tenuous at best philosophical stance) to do so.
I trust companies like Apple to utilize their economies of scale and collective engineering acumen to deliver a safer UX far more than I do their individual users in a freer ecosystem.
One could argue there is already a "live" experiment with a more open mobile ecosystem. Android is far more lax than Apple's walled garden, and this is my shocked face that it is rife with malware.
I understand there is some small fraction of the population that will cry foul at whatever egregious transgression Cupertino commits against the utopic vision of our lord RMS, but at the end of the day most of us have other things to do with our time and want to know, generally speaking, we're protected against all the other idiots.