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1) When the user owns the device it is up to him to decide what to do with it and not the manufacturer. So while they may not have the need for it, they definitely have the right to it if they so desire.

2) No you cant. You must use exploits/vulnerabilities usually. The only vendor that I know of that just sends you unlock code on request is HTC.

3) Yesterday I played Diablo 1 on my windows 8 machine. 3 months before that - Lotus (the game). That is measured in decades. How backwards capability is debatable.

4) Yes linux is everywhere. But invisible - moving the servers, or hidden below deep layers of customized software in the consumer devices. The linux ideology - nowhere to be seen.

Having the ability to run simple firewall to control what processes use your data plan is hardly absolutism. Or editing memory value of a running process.

Edit: Do you support the Chinese Great Firewall - because there is no difference in restricting access to internet and to software in principle?

On point (3), virtualization beats backwards compatibility. You can create a much closer replica of the original environment, without creating compromises that may affect stability, performance, and security of your new system.

You're going to create a virtualized replica of a system that is no longer supported, and that won't affect the security of your system??? Might want to rethink that one.

With proper sandboxing, it is safer than keeping deprecated, proven-unsafe APIs, and not even being able to fix bugs because some applications depend on them. In the worst-case scenario, you can restart the sandbox from a known-good snapshot.

EDIT: I realize we may be imagining different scenarios. I was thinking about the example given, of running original DOS programs in modern computers.

There seems to be a leap you've taken there. I don't think you've demonstrated that an old API is unsafe by virtue of being old. A platform company not wanting to maintain an API is not the same as that API being dangerous. This is the fallacy that some of the big guys have taken lately, to remove perfectly working stuff simply to be jerks.

1) Your response has nothing at all to do with my original point.

2) I didn't say you can do it easily, I said you CAN do it.

3) Yes and I can run decades old UNIX software on OS X or Ubuntu. So what?

My point about debatable backwards compatibility is that some old DOS software does NOT work well in modern Windows. Some does, some doesn't. If you haven't experienced problems, lucky you.

4) You made my point for me here.

I'm not arguing any further, you're clearly a zealot, and have exactly the kind of attitude I was talking about.

> That if something is not 100%, exactly, totally, purely aligned to your personal vision it's fucking garbage, or worse, evil and bad.

> I'm not arguing any further, you're clearly a zealot

On number 2 - you also cannot do it legally not only easily. The legality of jailbraiking is quite grey territory.

"1) When the user owns the device it is up to him to decide what to do with it and not the manufacturer. So while they may not have the need for it, they definitely have the right to it if they so desire."

Is this not part of a wider discussion about ownership and 'unregulated rights' for stuff such as books, music, films as well as hardware?

Global comment: Shuttleworth can do the public relations can't he?

Okay - the problem is ownership. When you rent a car in Hertz you know that you cannot modify the vehicle and must return it. So is with the library book you borrow.

But if Subaru tell you that you cannot tune aftermarket your Subaru or you must drive it only on Subaru approved roads in California (but not Nevada) it is stupid.

Currently we are in the reverse dongle situation- in the 90s you need that dongle so your software (OrCAD back then) can work. Now is the opposite - you may like the hardware but we actively prevent you for using it with other software.

The problem comes from the fact that modern devices are general purpose PCs in ultra small factors. You couldn't change nokia 3310 OS back then, but you needed not because the thing was a phonebook with antenna. But nowadays with so much of your life stored in the smartphone the idea that someone has higher privileges/easier access to your data than you is between repulsive and frightening.

4) The linux ideology - nowhere to be seen.

I think you're confusing Linux with the Free Software movement. Linux, the kernel, is all about open source producing high quality software - at least from Linus Torvalds' point of view.

You're just intolerant of other people's principles. Everyone is an absolutist about the rights they care about, but since you don't find software freedom to be particularly important, nobody else can complain about the status quo.

Well, to some of us, and after the Really Important Things™ that most of us agree with, we also find software freedom to be extremely important.

I'm intolerant? I'm not the one ranting about how something I disagree with is evil and bad. I'm the one preaching tolerance here.

Since you know absolutely nothing about me I find it hilarious that you would make assertions about my values.

You are the one ranting about how something you disagree with is bad, actually. (The only uses of "evil" have been by you, except for venomsnake discussing censorship.) Your comments have been much more nasty, dismissive, vitriolic, and over-the-top than those of venomsnake.

I tried a little experiment: I supposed that venomsnake commented in good faith, and isn't crazy. I could not find disconfirmation. In his/her first sentence, there's a proposal that there are some virtues to MS's approach, and that dethroning those virtues might not be an unalloyed good. In the second sentence, there's an observation that the new regime has substantial drawbacks (for some people's values, including many HN readers). The third sentence is a bit hyperbolic, true, but the fourth sums up fairly even-handedly by calling the victory pyrrhic (which does still mean victory, btw). What's the problem?

On the other hand, your first sentence is nothing but vitriol, your last sentence is nothing but vitriol, and you allocate time in the middle to a sarcastic "I'm so sorry", and to misrepresenting venomsnake's comment (about "open" and "backwards-compatible"), just so you can call it "stupid". All in all, not very nice.

And venomsnake replied to you with far more politeness than you deserved, and for that you called him-or-her a zealot.

I totally missed the bit where you're "preaching tolerance", sorry if that's thick of me. Could you point it out?

venomsnake was criticizing things (closed products), you were criticizing people. Yes, I find your position the intolerant one.

Well censorship is evil. Apple have the ability to censor what they put on their stores. (The drones tracking program) So we got the evil part.

The 30% apple cut increases the software prices for the end user or prevents a software for even coming to the platform (thinking of skydrive here). That is bad for the end user.

Censorship is evil, I could agree with that.

About your second phrase now, you need to take into account the entire picture:

* If you plan to sell an app on Windows Store you will need Microsoft approval, no app will be published without that. Also, Microsoft will take 30% from your app price (until you make $20k, after which the cut is 20%).

* The only free market seems to be Google Play, after you pay a fixed fee you can publish your app. I'm sure even Google has the right to remove your app if you infringe the rules of your developer contract.

Nobody actually uses the Windows Store. The app store for windows is the web: put an installer on your website, user clicks it, IE runs it. No jailbreaking required.

The only relatively free market is the web (which doesn't mean all the products sold through it are free, of course).

"Linux is fucking everywhere ... Even Apple devices are running a fork of BSD."

BSD's not Linux!

I know that. Everyone knows that. But BSD is also free and if you're in favor of people using Linux you should be in favor of people using BSD, IMHO.

The freedom of BSD is irrelevant to people using iOS.

Which is the ultimate problem of the BSD licence.

Problem with BSD license? We are discussing two separate issues here

1) Ability to unlock or root your device to run any OS

2) Having access to an open App Ecosystem.

The GNU license doesn't help with either of this issues. There are plenty of GNU/Android devices shipped with locked boot loaders. And nothing is stopping Google from locking down their App Store like Apples except a different corporate policy.

I don't think there's a problem with the BSD license, but the GNU license is actually supposed to help with those issues, just not the version used by the Linux kernel (v2).

Actually it's the only thing that has the potential to convince me to buy a product from Apple. I haven't yet but if it were closed, no way I would even consider it.

As I understand it, the BSD licence (which BTW only some elements of Mac OS X have, as happens with some elements of Windows) allows to redistribute binaries, modified or not, provided you keep the copyright notice. In that case, how are Apple products "less closed" than, say, Microsoft's?

Note: I barely use Apple or Microsoft, so the question is NOT rhetorical.

In addition to UNIXgod's comment, I can refer you to:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS_X

There you will find:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_BSD_operating_sys...

"... Apple Inc.'s iOS and Mac OS X, with its Darwin base including a large amount of code derived from FreeBSD."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_system)

"Darwin is an open source POSIX-compliant computer operating system released by Apple Inc. in 2000."

Yes, Apple has used free BSD code to build an OS that is not open source. I don't think anyone would dispute that.

Referring to the Berkeley TCP/IP stack?

Indeed. How does using the stack makes windows any less closed? Since you can't even tell to which degree it was modified, I think the answer is "it doesn't at all". And I think the same reasoning goes for mac OS X.

You seem to be conflating two separate things - the question of whether the core principles of GNU, Linux and other 'free' software are important, and whether they have been achieved.

Venomsnake's point very much seems to fall into the latter category - having devices that you need to jump through hoops, exploit holes etc, in order to be able to get full access to them is hardly a 'victory' for Linux (even if those devices are mostly running a form of Linux).

You seem to be trying to argue against this by saying those principles aren't important to most people. That may or may not be true - but regardless of that, it's not achieving what Linux set out to deliver.

> Most users do not need or want root access to their mobile phones or even any of their devices.

Irrelevant: they may not _want_ it, but they have a _right_ to it.

> That if something is not 100%, exactly, totally, purely aligned to your personal vision it's fucking garbage, or worse, evil and bad.

Sometimes it _is_ evil and bad not to do exactly the right thing.

>Oh my god I am so tired of seeing comments like this one on the internet.

Me too, please stop making them. The fact that you don't care about owning things you purchase does not imply that the entire concept of owning things you purchase is stupid and nobody should talk about it.