> "Unless a corporation is doing something illegal, you have no right to tell them what to do and what to make"

Exactly, legislation and legality is how we tell them what to do.

> Your demands to have the government coerce them into creating open APIs would be just as outrageous in this scenario.

I didn't demand govt-forced open APIs? Where did you come up with that? However right-to-repair and other freedoms and ownership over the hardware you purchase, especially when it's so critical to your life and centrally controlled, is worthwhile to pursue.

> "giving the government this much power is shortsighted at best"

Either the corporation or the government has the power. The challenge is finding the right balance, because neither should have complete authority.

> Exactly, legislation and legality is how well tell them what to do.

What legislation do you propose?

> I didn't demand govt-forced open APIs? Where did you come up with that?

OP’s comment, which you seem to be arguing in favor of. Apologies if I misinterpreted.

> Either the corporation or the government has the power.

Obviously. So long as there are anti-monopolistic practices in place, you can choose the corporation you want to interface with easily. Nothing is stopping OP from buying an Android phone, PinePhone, or Purism Librem 5.

Governments are not something you can choose, not really, and giving them wholesale control of how corporations can create tech products is granting them an absurd level of power, especially when viable alternatives already exist on the free market.

This line of thinking about viable alternatives goes to extremes when you don’t consider the capabilities of average consumers and differences in quality of product.

Like what the hell am I supposed to do on a purism libre that has 100x less apps of 1/10th the quality as iOS? It currently does not support signal, banking apps, maps, Spotify, slack, Feedly, pocket and millions more. Yes, a dev could potentially spend 100s of hours making shitty homegrown alternatives for every little app - this is a VERY long stretch. And even then 99% of people are not devs and will never ever ever do that. It’s like saying a horse is a viable alternative to a car. It’s not even in the same damn universe yet.

Just because you don’t like the options on the market doesn’t mean they don’t exist. That’s life. You don’t get to force other people into developing something that perfectly fits your desires.

For the record, the Librem 5 does indeed support many of those apps via Anbox.

No ones talking about forcing anyone to develop any thing.

We also need to stop talking about individual purchasing decisions as if they represent the broader market. The point is not that there are zero competitors in a monopolised market. It’s that those competitors suffer at the will of the monopoly and cannot bring viable competing products to market. Hence all the competitors outside of the big two in the mobile space having effectively zero market share combined.

Far from forcing people to develop something anti-trust is design to increase competition by opening up the market. Offering more people the opportunity to build the innovative things they want and consumers the ability to choose. As we saw with the results in this happening to MS it works reasonably well.

I didn’t say anything about forcing people to develop anything.. and yeah that’s life without legislation, but with the right laws it doesn’t have to be.

Right-to-repair and freedom to install and operate apps without going through a single centrally-controlled app store.

Here's a question: Should the wireless networks that your phone requires to function follow net neutrality? Why or why not?

Apple is approaching a monopsony over phone profits. Given time it could hollow out the competition until there is no practical alternative.

Support such companies or actually work on projects that further them.

The idea that the government is going to create an open software utopia is hard to understand.

> Unless a corporation is doing something illegal, you have no right to tell them what to do and what to make.

OK so we make it illegal. Governments are good at that.

The war on drugs has entered the chat

Make what illegal?

In this case, possibly nothing, since antitrust already exists. But I'm not qualified to decide. It is probably best to wait and see how this and the Apple/Epic case play out to see if changes are required.

I'm just a bit sick of the argument "It's OK if it is legal" when laws exist to serve us and can be changed. Discussion is the first step. My comment was a response to that.

Mandating right to repair and open platforms and formats (such as the circuit diagrams we used to get within our instruction manuals) would be one possibility.

You’d have to make that mandate global, otherwise you’d see countries that do permit trade secrets simply dominate the computing landscape.

This is not a realistic option.

I don't think it needs to be fully global, just a significant market. EU's mandate on USB-C chargers is one example where you lose a lot by opting out.

How is a standardized charging socket in any way comparable to banning trade secrets?

This doesn’t make sense to me.

It's an example of a law in one country changing what a company does in another country to access the market, without a global mandate. I read that as the main point, not trade secrets.

In your example, a company with trade secrets may want to (and be allowed to) keep circuit diagrams or charger designs secret in country A, but have to open them up to be allowed to sell in country B. It becomes a choice that carries a cost without a global mandate.