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Comment by fsflover | Hacker News Reader

> General-purpose computing is not being attacked or eliminated.

Yes, it is: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24866279.

> Hobbyists and specialists can buy products for them if they like.

Which phones can I buy to enjoy the freedom of general-purpose computing (and not suffer from non-mature ecosystem)? Which vendors manufacture hardware compatible with FLOSS?

> The monopoly discussion is a red herring because monopolies are bad regardless of whether those business offer fully customizable software.

If the phone runs free software, it makes it not a monopoly, because I can ask another company to write software for me.

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> Which phones can I buy to enjoy the freedom of general-purpose computing (and not suffer from non-mature ecosystem)?

Does Libram not count? Why do you get to also demand a mature ecosystem? This feels like demanding that corporations build a product specifically because you want it. There are precious few markets where we demand that businesses provide a product that the market wouldn't naturally demand, and I personally don't think that a general purpose computing phone should be one of those.

This whole discussion also feels a bit disingenuous now that you've brought up FLOSS, since Android has never really satisfied FLOSS-advocate goals. So why would it matter to you if exec privileges are changed?

Librem 5 counts [0], but it just started shipping. You can only get one in several months if you buy it now. Even for Librem 5, there is a problem of proprietary software in WiFi, Bluetooth and modem. It was a great struggle of Purism to find reasonable hardware, all vendors refuse to support FLOSS [1].

> since Android has never really satisfied FLOSS-advocate goals

Android was never FLOSS and it's getting even worse. AOSP is FLOSS, but you cannot use it without proprietary drivers. The latter force you to replace your phone every 2-3 years resulting in huge e-waste. It should definitely be "a market where we demand that businesses provide a product", at least for the nature.

> Why do you get to also demand a mature ecosystem?

Because many businesses and even governments force you to use either iPhone or Android. If I choose a GNU/Linux phone, I cannot use their services at all.

[0] Precursor would be more appropriate here, but it's only on preorder and is extremely slow, and lacks the modem: https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/precursor.

[1] https://puri.sm/posts/breaking-ground/

don't you think this security first approach is bad for our society? If walled golden cages like iOS become the only available option, average users will have an even harder time to get into general purpose computing and programming. Generation iPad doesn't even know what a file system is anymore.

And updating an existing product i own to kill its main function i use for work is outright evil.

It's like your car pushing an update restricting it to only drive on vendor approved roads, because there are some people getting in accidents on poorly maintained dirt roads.

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