I really don't consider myself a free market extremist. I fully support regulation for health and safety reasons, mandatory accurate and informative product descriptions, minimum quality requirements in many areas, consumer protection laws such as minimum warranty periods. There are many areas where it makes sense for us collectively, through our governments, to make sure we as consumers are not getting ripped off and get a fair deal. It's just balancing out the power disparity between vendors and individual customers.

So I am open to arguments for regulating mobile phone platforms, if that proves to be necessary. I just don't think it is, none of the arguments Ive seen so far are compelling. They mostly seem to be sour grapes. "I want to buy X product with P, Q, R features and nobody is making one, we should force them to by law". No, that's not how that works.

And, if by mobile, you mean network connected, even if you built your own hardware from components, you still don't own and control the networks (cellular or otherwise) over which that device will communicate.

ADDED: And if it's not obvious from the context, by "network" I mean a network that can communicate with the broader world, not just a LAN.

Also, you probably don’t have the right to make your own mobile modem unless you’re fine with it needing its own car battery and alternator thanks to Qualcomm’s patents.

Standards patents must be made available to license. Apple tried really hard to invest in a competing cellular modem provider (Intel) and gave up. Turns out, they’re really hard to build, and that’s why you can’t build one. Not patents.

Apple did purchase Intel's modem division[0], so while they temporarily have started purchasing from Qualcomm, maybe they're throwing more R&D at it than Intel did to actually compete with Qualcomm within the next few years.

0: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/07/apple-to-acquire-the-...

I'm not following you. What's to stop you setting up your own local network, entirely under your control?

For a LAN: Nothing, but you won't be able to communicate to anyone outside of it. You also won't be able to access it away from wherever you set it up.

For the primary networks at issue here, cellular networks: The FCC, and regulations restricting what devices can access which EM frequencies legally.

Nit: it is possible to build a private LTE/5G network if you use appropriate spectrum reserved for that purpose:

* https://www.sierrawireless.com/iot-blog/what-are-private-lte...

Not sure about connectivity to the larger / global SS7 network.

So, you don't own other people's networks? Right.

> They mostly seem to be sour grapes. "I want to buy X product with P, Q, R features and nobody is making one, we should force them to by law". No, that's not how that works.

I think it’s closer to: I bought a 10% black box (90% open) widget in the 1990s, and now in 2020 that same widget (with a few more functions) is 80% closed. And: why can I no longer use a generic computer for what I want to use it for? We’ve forgotten that an open distributed learning web is possible, and how instead computer literacy (programming) is very low because most of us can no longer follow our curiosity and look inside technological systems; only ‘experts' are allowed to do that (someone wrote about that recently, that whenever he talked to older/earlier computer hobbyists, how most of them mention that they are pretty disappointed by today‘s black box world/web).

And no they’re not ‘sour grapes‘, they’re just sensing the painful ways in which the commons has been plundered, and feeling frustrated by the way people such as yourself pretend that there are still many benefits to be found in locked down/black box platforms and devices, which there aren't.

The completely ludicrous part is how normalized all this is today. How much our tools are now over-engineered, non-modular and non-repairable; how much black box shit we produce. Literal shit. Single use shit. Biological systems have no waste, yet our current production systems produce the most toxic, anti-life sludge the world has seen (see Baotou -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_UdqZdFr-w). Today we produce coffee machines that have iPads sitting in a dock with virtual buttons to choose options. An iPad. What the fuck. What is that? Infinitely less complex technology was used to send people to the moon. What a complete and total waste of valuable resources and laborers' time!

I'm talking about how we could have so many more open standards and decide to produce only high quality stuff. But no, our culture teaches us to discredit those who came before and to commoditize tiny incremental updates, slapping our own names on them (‘branding’) to please our neglected and alienated souls. I’m so tired of this false story of the need for competition. Humans are copying machine. It’s ok to copy! It’s how we learn and grow.

Anyways, to get closer to a 'universal basic inheritance' - a commons that respects actual scarcity, and thus also the abundance of digital resources (scientific knowledge and technological blueprints), we need a new system for accounting. I believe http://valueflo.ws can offer us a very possible way forward https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vymAHXGSM14: they are radically distributed supply chain systems using the Resource-Event-Agent ontology, built on fully distributed tech, e.g. holochain and activitypub.

To see an exciting future that has been buried yet not forgotten (it's a new Cybersyn documentary): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJLA2_Ho7X0

This is so out of touch with the actual real world it's a bit concerning. There are plenty of open computing platforms kids can learn from these days, and schools are full of them. PCs are still pretty open, Linux is easy to install, Raspberry Pi and similar devices are cheap and accessible. My kids learned about all that stuff at school here in the UK. In most developed countries almost every kid in school gets to learn how to write at least simple programs. I taught my kids Python on their iPads.

>...pretend there are still many benefits to be found in locked down platforms and devices, which there isn't.

Now you're in lala land. People derive enormous benefits from ubiquitous access to easy to use computer technology all the time. They're just not the benefits you personally seem to value or understand.

"There are plenty of open computing platforms"

And roughly zero of them can make a phonecall, or a contactless payment, or to find directions on the go because they are not portable and internet connected.

All of the areas you mentioned are heavily regulated. And do GPS require internet connection ?

Yeah, I'm not sure where this incredibly open world of 1999 (to say nothing of 1989 or 1979) existed.

Telephony has always been very closed--fringe phone phreaking notwithstanding. Heck, some of us have been around long enough to remember when you had to rent a phone from a regulated monopoly.

And in the 90s, Windows was mostly your choice in a computer. You could build your own PCs but you mostly had to run Windows. (Linux was still quite early days at that time.)

Access to computing under the hood is much more democratized than it used to be even if the vast majority of people choose to use effectively appliances for certain tasks.

And, if I recall correctly, in the '90s, you had to pay for developer tools for Windows. (Or Mac, but Windows was, indeed, mostly your choice in a computer.) Today, every mainstream computer shipped—Mac and Windows—has a dizzying variety of free-as-in-beer development environments available for them, many also free-as-in-freedom.

Yes. Developer tools (and consumer software generally) were quite expensive. A typical compiler from Microsoft was hundreds of dollars. (Borland drove pricing down somewhat.) I forget what an MSDN subscription cost but it wasn't cheap.

> I bought a 10% black box (90% open) widget in the 1990s, and now in 2020 that same widget (with a few more functions) is 80% closed.

My mobile phone in the 90s was certainly not 90% open, it was far less open than my current iphone. I guess it was easier to change the battery, if that's what you mean? Swapping a proprietary battery doesn't count as open in my book.

My desktop computer in the 90s on the other hand was far more closed than my current one.

> The right to private property has been cancelled by, ironically, free market extremists.

This line of argument is frankly incoherent. That many, not all, available mobile devices remain firmly under the control of their makers after purchase is not because some free marketeer (or cabal thereof) foisted these devices onto unwilling recipients. This situation came about because the majority of mobile device users saw the deal on offer and decided they were better off taking it that walking. The real source of the status quo is the average consumer... no matter their ideology. That buyers weigh promises of "Just Works", the status of owning the cool new device that's in fashion, and some guardian supposedly lurking in the background keeping them safe over your own (seemingly apparent) priorities is a matter of each individual choice.

Private property rights haven't been cancelled at all or by anyone. There simply aren't enough people interested in owning devices that they fully control. Insofar as there are few alternatives to the status quo... blame the privacy activists and those clamoring for "full control" for not better convincing the masses that what they're giving up for iOS & Android is more than they're getting by buying these devices. As a free market extremist myself, I guarantee you: if people stop buying these devices because the deal is perceived as bad the situation will change.

Finally, if I try to infer what you might be for (rather than what you're against), which I do because it's the only reason to call out "free market extremists", is that you want a small group of "our betters" to decide what exactly a mobile device should be, over and above all those that find the current deal sufficiently satisfactory. You would have your priorities made the only choice over the interests of the majority of consumers. Ironically, perhaps, you'd eliminate the broader spectrum of choices by forcing what choices were allowed... wanted and valued or not. Naturally, I'm reading a lot into your short comment... but what solution do you really see that isn't a free market extremist position that doesn't come close to what I think you're saying?

Its so ironic to see 'freedom people' defend a system that would make Stalin green with envy.

"saw the deal on offer and decided they were better off taking it that walking"

The same reasoning applies to loan sharks, drug dealers and mafia. 'Unlimited' free market always degrades into oligopoly or Mafia rule.

"you want a small group of "our betters" to decide what exactly a mobile device should be"

You want that, and you have that- a small group of powerfull men decide to do with your device. Tomorrow your device uodates and startps reporting you to police for speeding, and there is fuck all you can do.

I am not asking for a communist mobile pgone comitee, I am asking for the word ownership to mean something. It's not a difficult concept.

At least with Android, you have the option to install external APKs, as cumbersome as that is.

7 steps isn't cumbersome.

-- 1) Open Chrome.

-- 2) Find and Download APK. https://i.imgur.com/ZFZb1uE.png

-- 3) Accept warning and Open APK.

-- 4) Go to settings. (This only has to be done once) https://i.imgur.com/R8FzTzP.png

-- 5) Toggle Install Unknown Apps for Chrome. (This only has to be done once) https://i.imgur.com/K0ADO2q.png

-- 6) Click back (This only has to be done once)

-- 7) Click install. https://i.imgur.com/xVSndex.png

-- Done. https://i.imgur.com/fyasTK9.png

Once you do this for the first time, the process reduces down to 4 steps each time after: Open Chrome, Download APK, Open APK, Click Install. Done.

Seems like you could copy paste this into every single "complaining about Apple" thread on Hacker News for the last few years. That people think that Android doesn't exist or is exactly the same as Apple, and you can't sideload apps or root at least some devices has become a widely held belief on Hacker News that has to get corrected in every single thread. I count several different comments that are mistaken in this way in this post alone.

That's because we don't like telling the people who need to be told that you can sideload apps, because they're the very same people who will later complain that they downloaded a "Free APK" of Sparkle Monkey Defenders eX from some Chinese app store and now their phone is vomiting up full-screen interstitial ads every few minutes. ...and we're supposed to fix it for them.

-- 8) Wait for a call from Aunt Susan after she installs some malware that told her it would boost her cell signal. :)

* https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/infected-apkpure/39273/

God forbid we hold users responsible for exercising due diligence. No, we must assume everyone is too incompetent to distinguish between shady and legit software.

> No, we must assume everyone is too incompetent to distinguish between shady and legit software.

As someone who has worked retail in the past, and who currently works in IT: starting with this assumption generally minimizes headaches down the road.

There are only so many hours in the day: people learn what they need to get their job done, and tend to move on. Some people are quite dim, but others don't have the time/energy/motivation/need to learn the details.

I think us enthusiasts tend to lose sight of the fact that most people don’t care to learn about how their computers work, just like how most people don’t care to learn about how their cars work.

And pretty much no one understands to any significant depth all or probably even most of the technology they interact with every day.

Every discussion about the average user needs to start with https://xkcd.com/2501 to put yourself in the right mindset.

Proffeshionals can't distinguish vulnerabilities in their own fucking software, so we have no right to blame the users.

First rule of IT club is you DONT TELL AUNT SUSUAN ABOUT THIS METHOD!

It used to be grandma. Because of grandma (and Aunt Susan), future generations of children will never have the freedom we had growing up.

Is not like the Google and Apple stored are not filled with garbage, it was recently revealed that Apple refused to notify the users that got infected from their "safe" store.

About Aunt Susan , you could have the device locked by default and have a more complex process to root the device, like some code/password that is in the box of the device, in that envelope Apple PR team could inform Aunt Susan that she should not do this unless she is tech competent or a communist.

Also you can install AOSP which is open source android operating system on some devices. And some other open source Android flavours. Yes, may be with few driver blobs, but that's not a restriction, you still can do anything with your device on every level.

Well and at least some suppliers offer you the option to install your own OS on it. At which point any restrictions the phone has are at least technically self-imposed.

That's a rather extremist viewpoint but it does have a nice rhyme to it.

PinePhone?