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.

What I like about your comment is that it points out that all technical work-arounds are moot if people as a whole are not willing to stand up with pitchforks and torches to defend their freedoms. It will always come down to that. A handful of tech-savvy users with rooted devices and open-source software will not make a difference to the giant crushing machine that is the system.

And I'm afraid most of us are part of the system, rage-clicking away most of our days, distracted, jaded perhaps, like it historically has always been.

Only competition can provide a solution. We have lost sight of this principle even though all Western democracies are built on the idea of separation of powers, and making it hard for any one faction of elites to gain full control and ruin things for everyone else. Make them fight with each other, let them get a piece of the pie, but never all of it. That's why we have multiple branches of government, multiple parties etc. That's why we have markets with many firms instead of monopolies.

There has never been a utopian past and there will never be a utopian future. The past was riddled with despotism and many things that the average man or woman today would consider horrific. The basic principle of democratic society is to prevent those things from recurring by pitting elite factions against each other. Similarly business elites who wield high technology to gain their wealth must also compete and if there is any sign of them cooperating too closely for too long, we need to break them up or shut them down.

When Apple and Google agree, cooperate, and adopt the same policies - we are all doomed. It must never happen and we must furthermore break them up if they try, which they are now doing.

In fact true competition is only possible via open standards, protocols and technology stacks.

We need agreement to ensure the large corporations adhere to these.

We don't need agreement for this. In the past, hardware was limited, and you could only really implement one (maybe two) network stacks before things got silly. Nowadays, a software-defined radio can speak ten thousand protocols, for a lower cost than saving a cat video to your hard drive.

We only need that the standards are open, and described clearly enough for a schoolchild to implement, and that we are not prevented from adding additional protocol support to systems we acquire.

Hardware protocols are a bit different, but I actually dislike the USB-C standardisation. We already had better de-facto standards (e.g. small, "fixed-function" devices like feature phones and e-readers all use Micro USB-B for charging). Our problems were mainly "this laptop barrel charger is incompatible with this other laptop barrel charger", and proprietary Apple connectors.

The most important hardware protocol is power supply, which we can fix by requiring well-documented, user-accessible contacts that, when sufficiently-clean power is applied to them, will power the device. These could be contacts on the motherboard (for something designed to be opened up), or something like Apple's Smart Connector (without the pointless "I'll refuse to charge until you handshake!" restriction).

Requiring open, well-documented protocols which aren't unnecessarily-complicated is imo more important than requiring standard protocols.

We're not just talking about hardware here.

Any standard that is developed closed-source and is protected or proprietary, can and will prevent consumer choice further down the line.

Interoperability of data, choice between vendors, and the ability for smaller players to compete with established larger players are all directly negatively affected by a lack of open standards.

They're negatively affected by a lack of openness. Some proprietary XML nonsense that's well-documented makes interoperability a week's work, maximum. Meanwhile, Microsoft's incomprehensible "open standard OOXML", supported by every document editor I care to name, is a huge impediment to interoperability. Limiting myself to even the well-designed ODF format means there are features I can't implement in my software: standardisation comes at the expense of innovation.

In software, the problem is closedness, protectionism, and undocumentedness, not proprietary wheel reinvention.

>In software, the problem is closedness, protectionism, and undocumentedness, not proprietary wheel reinvention.

Quite simply, the first three problems are actually caused by proprietary wheel reinvention.

Correct. But proprietary wheel reinvention is necessary (albeit clearly not sufficient) for progress, so we mustn't prohibit it!

No it isn't necessary for progress.

Standards can be (and are) developed cooperatively and these still allow and encourage progress.

C23 would not be nearly as good as it is without proprietary C compiler extensions, and other non-C programming languages. Sure, C23's versions of some features are better than many proprietary implementations, but they wouldn't exist at all if the lessons hadn't been learned from that exploration.

Once upon a time, Jabber was the messaging protocol. But what killed interoperable instant messaging wasn't a shift away from Jabber: it was a shift away from interoperability. Requiring all chat communication systems to be Jabber wouldn't have helped, and it would have prevented IRCv3.

>Once upon a time, Jabber was the messaging protocol. But what killed interoperable instant messaging wasn't a shift away from Jabber: it was a shift away from interoperability.

And how is interoperability possible without agreed standards?

The same way it always has been? Microsoft Office implements the WordPerfect formats, and WordPerfect implements the Microsoft Office formats.