We should have the ability to run any code we want on hardware we own

> In this context this would mean having the ability and documentation to build or install alternative operating systems on this hardware

It doesn't work. Everything from banks to Netflix and others are slowly edging out anything where they can't fully verify the chain of control to an entity they can have a legal or contractual relationship with. To be clear, this is fundamental, not incidental. You can't run your own operating system because it's not in Netflix's financial interest for you to do so. Or your banks, or your government. They all benefit from you not having control, so you can't.

This is why it's so important to defend the real principles here not just the technical artefacts of them. Netflix shouldn't be able to insist on a particular type of DRM for me to receive their service. Governments shouldn't be able to prevent me from end to end encrypting things. I should be able to opt into all this if I want more security, but it can't be mandatory. However all of these things are not technical, they are principles and rights that we have to argue for.

My parents are getting old and they aren't tech savvy. The missing piece here is that I want my parents to have a computer they can safely do their banking on, without leaving them vulnerable to scams and viruses and the like. I like that they have iphones. Doing internet banking on their phone is safer than doing it on their desktop computer. Why is that?

The reason is that the desktop PC security model is deeply flawed. In modern desktop operating systems, we protect user A from user B. But any program running on my computer is - for some reason - completely trusted with my data. Any program I run is allowed to silently edit, delete or steal anything I own. Unless you install special software, you can't even tell if any of this is happening. This makes every transitive dependency of every program on your computer a potential attack vector.

I want computers to be hackable. But I don't also want my computer to be able to be hacked so easily. Right now, I have to choose between doing banking on my (maybe - hopefully - safe) computer. Or doing banking on my definitely safe iphone. What a horrible choice.

Personally I think we need to start making computers that provide the best of both worlds. I want much more control over what code can do on my computer. I also want programs to be able to run in a safe, sandboxed way. But I should be the one in charge of that sandbox. Not Google. Definitely not Apple. But there's currently no desktop environment that provides that ability.

I think the argument against locked down computers (like iphones and androids) would be a lot stronger if linux & friends provided a real alternative that was both safe and secure. If big companies are the only ones which provide a safe computing experience, we're asking for trouble.

This argument doesn't contradict the article.

An expensive iPhone ships with iOS and a rigid security model.

If you tap the `about` button 16 times and click a confirmation dialog, you disable certain security mechanisms against arbitrary software installation. Do something else easy but impossible to do accidentally, and you unlock the bootloader. You progressively lose portions of your warranty in doing so.

This is the path I think we should be going down.