His comment provides a hint that fragmentation happens because device ownership does not provide an adequate means to update or access the device's firmware.

For lots of devices out there (sans Google Nexus-devices and other honest exceptions), the device firmware is locked down and you need to find and exploit vulnerabilities in the firmware to gain access and fully assert device-owners. While hobbyist hackers often are able to produce updated firmware (look at OpenWRT and Android if you need proof), actually gaining access to upload that firmware typically requires more expert knowledge. And thus most devices remain locked down for their full lifetime.

As more devices become smart and have the capability to work against you given hostile firmware (TVs, fridges, etc), this becomes more and more important.

We should legally be allowed to actually own the devices we buy, but if the firmware is locked down and out of reach, we can never truly own it anyway.

The devices can be (some already are, sans spying TVs) programmed against us. How can we know? How can make sure they don't?

Not to go all Stallmansque, but I find this deeply worrying and very unethical.

We need to require open access to firmware everywhere, for everything. Asking for all original firmware to be open is clearly unrealistic, but at least give us access to provide our own should we want to.

All of this is true, but if people keep buying devices with their firmware locked and that aren't being kept up to date, then nothing will ever change, unless government regulations are introduced and that can create other problems.

I've had very positive experiences with my Nexus devices, though not all models are the same. Acquaintances have had good experiences with other, more open models, like OnePlus One. Yet I'm seeing even software developers buy phones that are tightly locked and that aren't being kept up to date properly, software developers who should have known better by the nature of their work. And then they bitch and moan about it.

This notion of buying things based on ethical and health-related considerations has become more prevalent in recent years in other markets (e.g. food, clothes), yet in the software industry after the great run we've had in early 2000 in regards to open standards and open-source, it seems that we are going back, willingly giving up one freedom after another.

But and I think this is important - I rather prefer the current ecosystem of fragmented Android phones, because the very essence of open-source is the right to fork. And if anything, Android is not fork-able enough due to Play and the Play Services. If you want a tightly controlled OS on a tightly controlled device, iPhone/iOS is that way. And I own both, I'm glad that both options exist and I hope Firefox OS will become a good alternative as well.

The problem is that being "open" is one deciding factor in 1000. I can't go through a checklist and say: "I want $screen_size, $battery_life, and make sure it's open as well!"

I have to first search which phones are open, then narrow down available size, battery, etc.

This might be new to you, but PC users that run linux have been dealing with this reality since 1996.

my first PC had a winmodem and an OPTi OPL-3SA sound card. traded the winmodem for a rockwell 33.6Kbps, and opted for a Yamaha sound card (because paying for OpenSound drivers was stupid, and the free trial gave you 30 minutes of working sound drivers).

It's not new to me, but yeah, your point stands. It's the same thing as linux was ~20 years ago. Hopefully the situation will improve like linux has

While I would also want everything free or open source, firmware is not necessarily like other free or open source projects that can just assume that they are running within a standard environment. It has a tendency to be much more specific to the hardware, so unless that hardware conforms to some standard to reduce the need to have to have many different firmware projects, there may not be the resources available to maintain all of those projects.

rms is not wrong, imo, but it would take much more effort than just putting the source out on the net somewhere. Since you have to get that source reviewed, compiled, and somehow put into the fridge or dishwasher now you need the fridge or dishwasher listening for firmware updates from the manufacturer and user and that has additional cost, probably beyond what would be needed for a repairman to update it, since it would have to be more straightforward to do for a regular user, or automatic. And some users may not want automatic updates, so you'd have to make that optional somehow. All of that adds to cost, so companies have little incentive to do all of this when weighing against the risk of the appliance's firmware getting misused and the cost of that.

Yes, devices are becoming more hostile to the use, I agree with most of your points. However, I don't think that there is a pure technical solution (open firmware updates etc.) as it depends on technical expertise of the users. Instead, we should support non profits and b-corps which can be trusted by users.

No.

Scare users about reflashing without having expertise in the field. Warn about not having any support, yet still provide some means to support them if they don't heed the warning and fail, so they don't brick the devices - keep a tiny emergency recovery-only bootloader that would allow to reflash system in any state.

But please don't insult their intelligence and don't deny their rights to control their own devices. Sure thing, there are plenty of stupid persons who'd wreck everything and then some. Heck, I hope I'm not too stupid myself, but when I first time flashed a router I screwed things up because of a typo. Let users end with the brick (they were warned, right?), recover it - or pay someone to do so - and learn.

The only real issue that's in conflict with this is theft prevention. A legit use should be able to run any software on their device, but some don't want to give that opportunity to anyone but its legitimate owner. The technological part for this is here, but that's not a technical issue, but a purely legal one.

But please, don't just shift the trust from vendor to some non-profit. Let the device owners manage their trust by themselves and have the ultimate decision on such matters. And for all the sanity still left in the world, let end-users still be the owners.

Your attack is naively misdirected, I fully support the right of device owners to have a full control of their gadgets including firmware, hardware, software, you name it. But as most users (and we already know this) don't care about these freedoms, for-profit companies don't have an incentive to guarantee them. Especially if it weakens their competitive advantage. Hence my call to support non-profits, like Mozilla.

Sorry if that sounded like an attack. No offense was meant.

I guess I got your point wrong. Now I see. Yes, that makes sense. Even though I don't like, say, Mozilla (I have my reasons), with a popular after-market firmware they may fight for a way for everyone to flash anything - not just their firmware. Just hope this won't end up like it happened with UEFI Secure Boot, where everyone's who's unlucky to have firmware that doesn't support custom keys are stuck with Ubuntu-signed GRUB.

No offense taken :)

You may not like Mozilla and that's ok. But you still should support them as Mozilla's interests are mostly aligned with the interests of the users.

About Mozilla - I have an impression that they put their own interests (product popularity) somewhat above user interests.

Yet, as long as everything doesn't end up with some Mozilla-specific partnerships or highly proprietary (in a sense of uniqueness, not source code availability) solutions that are hard to use for anything but FirefoxOS, I think you're right.

Add/Edit: although - in reference to your original comment up the thread - I'd wont say "instead". I think it's what felt wrong to me and got me confused with what you had suggested.

In my opinion, popularity of Mozilla products in itself is in the best interests of most users, directly and through positive externalities. Minor transgressions like Pocket integration are a petty reason not to support Mozilla and their mission as a whole.

Edit: sure, my wording could be more clear.

Did you ever like mozilla, or were these reasons more recent in nature?

I personally liked Mozilla up to the SJW/Eich situation. Since then, every move they've made has been counter to the tenets of free software that JWZ and team instilled. Now, I merely use it because everything else is less-free.

I'm hoping Servo will end up being to Firefox what Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox was to Netscape.

<rant>

They used to be good when they started. I only care about what they do with and to the technology. Whoever is on their team doesn't concern me.

My current issues with Mozilla/Firefox:

- Caving in with adding DRM support, which contradicted their principles because, duh, otherwise users would hop to Chrome to watch Netflix.

- Dropping relatively sane sync-1.1 in favor of sync-1.5. It's as proprietary Firefox-specific solution as it only could be, with internals being a terrible mess I can't call anything but over-engineered. And after more than an year it's still insecure. And they purportedly removed UI for self-hosted sync.

- Promoting Persona/BrowserID, contributing to the very wrong concept that someone's very identity is their account with a third party (email or domain address, as leased by email provider or domain registry). Good thing they put this on hold.

- Simplifying UI where it's unwanted. Say, just recently the "green lock" UI was crippled to the extent it doesn't provide any useful information anymore. To heck with "secure connection", I can see this in the address bar already.

- Bundling more and more stuff into browser, like it's a new Netscape Navigator.

- Gradually showing more and more "hints" and "useful tips" all around, without means to opt out once and for good. Like that annoying popup at the bottom of the "top sites" page on Android (the only UI to disable is about:config).

- Starting to add non-opt-in analytics/tracking anti-features (Adjust on Android release builds).

I feel that those things are not in favor of end-user personal freedoms, but were introduced just because marketing thought they'd look appealing to the audience - who doesn't care about the mission and other stuff that Mozilla likes to mention - or necessary to keep market share. It's just my personal perception, though. I'm by no means objective here.

</rant>

While I agree with most of your criticism, I actually find them visualizing new features a good thing.

Right now the Firefox dev team is preparing to axe Panorama/Tab-groups[1], one of those superior Firefox-only features, because supposedly only 1% of the users are using it.

That sounds reasonable, until you ask "Has the feature been marketed at all?". When the answer is no, even 1% seems like high adaptation and axing suddenly sounds less like the right answer.

Why didn't they market this feature more? It's absolute genius, and allows an efficient keyboard-only driven browsing experience with almost countless tabs, and it's correspondingly bonkers to be removing it.

[1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tab-groups-removal

> Since then, every move they've made has been counter to the tenets of free software

I object and would like to provide this link to back it up: https://github.com/mozilla

Note: on HN, taking Brenden's side in the Eich/SJW catastrophizing will cost you karma.