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

Here's the deal for you young'ns. Richard Stallman (rms) had it right on this topic and alot of people had to fight to have the limited stack we have.

It's not enough though.

All we can do is make all the decisions possible to keep an open stack as viable as possible - even though what we have now is woefully incomplete. We need to push for this within our teams, within our companies, within our governments, in civil society, and everywhere else that we can because the corporate crowding out of a free technology stack will crowd out everything else if it's allowed to.

It's not the devices, or the operating systems. RMS didn't see TiVo coming, but TiVo was never the problem: by the time GPL3 was ready, the industry (e.g. AOSP) has mostly moved to MIT/BSD. In the end, none of this mattered.

The real problem is that @gmail.com or @icloud.com are now required to participate in society. I'm happy to use an iPhone, it's in my subjective opinion the best device on the market. My concern is that I need an iCloud account to talk to my bank. It's become nearly as powerful as my ID card.

> The real problem is that @gmail.com or @icloud.com are now required to participate in society

They absolutely are not, though. I've been fully bought into the Apple ecosystem for nearly 2 decades and have used a Fastmail email address with it for the last decade (when I ditched my MobileMe email address). Similarly, I have never had an @gmail.com email address, though I've used various Google products.

They meant an apple or Google account, not literally the email address.

Try to live without an Apple ID or Google account. Probably about as difficult as living without an ID.

Then the argument is just that you need an Apple or Google account to use Apple or Google products. But that's widely true across all kinds of companies and product categories. I need a Microsoft account to use XBox, I need an account to pay my water bill, I need an account to use my home security system, etc. People expect products and services to have internet connected features. Accounts are what allow that to happen.

> People expect products and services to have internet connected features. Accounts are what allow that to happen.

Why do I need an Apple/Google account to use my bank account? I can't even log in from a web browser anymore.

That's my entire original point.