Just like we have software developed by the community, for the community. Can we have the same ideology applied to hardware ?
Just like we have software developed by the community, for the community. Can we have the same ideology applied to hardware ?
Open plans and schematics, interoperable, standardized. I should be able to unplug a component from my computer and plug it into another one. I should be able to replace broken parts. I should be able to, if feasible, make it myself with off the shelf components.
Let’s appreciate general purpose computers before the war against them will be successful.
https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Coming_War_on_General_Computation
I can’t believe I’d never read that before despite being a fan of Doctorow in general. Thank you. Exceptional work. Should be mandatory reading.
There’s a great talk on the same topic he gave at the Long Now Foundation back in 2012, the Q and A adds a bit to the users vs owners chat
That was THIRTEEN YEARS ago?!
Quite a good follow up talk posted not so long ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rimtaSgGz_4
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rimtaSgGz_4
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
I admit I have only skimmed this yet, but that was 12 years ago. Back then, copyright was a major problem for a free and open society in which people could freely communicate.
The world has changed since then. Those opposed to such a society are now more likely to talk about disinformation, radicalization, child porn, hate speech rather than copyright. Those pretexts aren’t really any better of course.
I think the most compelling reason will be performance.
In enterprise is already soldering ram directly onto the chip, it’s only a matter of time until the same goes for consumer tech. Fusing the chip to the board has benefits too. When most people don’t ever upgrade or repair their computer a 10% speed increase that makes upgrading impossible just makes good business sense.