> you think the best way to fight for software freedom is to ensure people get hacked rather than, like, actual policies designed around giving control back to users

It's just being realistic. Obviously, it would be great if there were laws guaranteeing the users' right to have full control over devices they've purchased, but I think most people have accepted that this ship has sailed. So we can only really hang on to the little control we still have, which is usually achieved without the manufacturer's permission.

No, that’s just being stupid. There are thousands of people in Europe petitioning right now to give people freedom to run games even after the company that runs them shuts down. People are working on accessibility technologies that help put computers in the hands of more people than ever before. Countries are slowly turning the screws on companies who abuse their monopolies to make worse products for people. Meanwhile ‘userbinator thinks the best way to ensure software freedom is to argue on an Internet forum about why everyone should use C.

BTW: Stallman is brought up too which is actually very relevant for why this is such a losing argument: jailbreaks are cool and all but today they are basically irrelevant for the average user. This is just like Stallman fighting for GPL is nice but only really for people who compile their software themselves. People like the ability to have control over their software but going about it from the perspective of a software engineer who can write code or hack things is very exclusionary.