There's some meta-analysis, perspective, that I think Cory Doctorow captured very well on this topic, broadly, recently. "Descartes' God has failed and Thompson's Satan rules our computers"[1] is the true fact of the day, describes the hell-hole shit-crap reality we have been forced into via extremely aggressive IP rules & enforcement. Corporatism pushing ever-diminishing legal & ethos-based respect for humanity keeps making victory after victory, against humankind's ability not (just) to repair, but to understand, to be in contact with, to learn about the world about them. Corporate machinehood has permission to dictate that the user know nothing, learn nothing, understand nothing, be merely reduced to an end-user. This is poison, at the deepest level an abject violation of the spirit & virtue of the fundamental birthright of man- the tool maker- to learn & develop & improve their environment. The new equation of computing turns us into animals, mere users of what is. It is vile. A right to repair is such a basic, fundamental expression, of our right to continue, to avoid loss, but the real battle is so much larger, so much about whether corporations are allowed to control & own understanding, or whether mankind is permitted an ongoing say & understanding of the artifacts that fill our world. Man became great upon a backbone of natural science, but science of the artificial is prevented by law.

Props to Cory, for, as usual, calibrating us & driving us towards some very common very basic sense.

[1] https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/05/trusting-trust/#thompsons...