IBM somehow figured out how to do it on an IBM 5150 back in the early 80s and my Raspberry Pi supports it on ARM systems.
I'm happy to use my iPhone which doesn't allow firmware mods under warranty, however, I've never heard Apple talk about the iPhone being an open platform. Google's stance on the openness of Android strikes me as disingenuous.
Yeah, that one never gets boring.
Oh, you mean the _hardware_ is locked down? Guess what, I can't install Ubuntu on an Iphone either. I guess that makes Ubuntu non-open then?
open source licenses generally don't provide warranty because they don't have to and devs, providing free stuff, certainly do not want to bother with warranties. Companies could.
Just compare how much an insurance costs that covers damages caused by yourself (being negligent) as opposed to those covering only damages caused by hardware/software defects.
As it should. There's nothing in open source that requires a warranty. Here's a snippet from the MIT license, generally considered open:
"THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT."
And from the GPL, also open:
"THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW."
When manufacturers go out of their way to lock down a device, I agree that's a jerk move. But I also don't think it's reasonable to expect them to agree to replace your device if it bricks after you've hacked the firmware. Obviously, the device may be bricked for reasons entirely unrelated to whatever you've hacked, but I don't begrudge manufacturers for drawing a line in the sand and not wanting to expend resources beyond it.