> Perhaps we need some sort of "Fully Unlocked" certification to indicate that a device you're considering purchasing would actually be yours?

Maybe we should make it impossible to advertise a product as being purchasable if you also aren't purchasing rights to the software (and the ability to modify it). Just remove ownership from the equation entirely unless they can demonstrate that the user has full control of the hardware.

That would be a pyrrhic victory at best. True ownership of comsumer devices is de facto a thing of the distant past. If you degraded sales to rentals by law, manufacturers would immediately try to jump onto that train and come up with ways to extract even more momey from customers. How would you feel for having to pay your CPU manufacturer for the actual CPU time spent on your personal desktop computer at home? Of course, each core counts separately. Can't have you pay less for running properly paralellized programs, now can we?

> That would be a pyrrhic victory at best. True ownership of comsumer devices is de facto a thing of the distant past.

Only because consumers are not offered an honest choice.

Anyway buying by the cycle would fall squarely into non-ownership, would it not?

In any case, this type of pessimism IS a clear loss for consumers.

Like this one? https://fsf.org/ryf

"The "Respects Your Freedom" computer hardware product certification program encourages the creation and sale of hardware that will do as much as possible to respect your freedom and your privacy, and will ensure that you have control over your device. "

That would only be a useful certification if anything was certified with it.

I can't tell if you and GP are being tongue-in-cheek about FSF's RYF certification or not.

Either way, you got a sad laugh from me.

A very depressed sort of tongue-in-cheek, but I sometimes forget that there's no tone of voice on the internet.