I believe consumers, as a right, should be able to install software of their choosing to any computing device that is owned outright.
This should apply regardless of the computer’s form factor. In addition to traditional computing devices like PCs and laptops, this right should apply to devices like mobile phones, “smart home” appliances, and even industrial equipment like tractors.
In 2025, we’re ultra-connected via a network of devices we do not have full control over. Much of this has to do with how companies lock their devices’ bootloaders, prevent root access, and prohibit installation of software that is not explicitly sanctioned through approval in their own distribution channels.
We should really work on changing that.
↫ Medhir Bhargava
Obviously, this is preaching to the choir here on OSNews. I agree with Bhargava 100%. It should be illegal for any manufacturer of computing devices – with a possible exception for, say, things like medical implants, certain aspects of car control units, and so on – to lock down and/or restrict owners’ ability to install whatever software they want, run whatever code they want, and install whatever operating system they want on the devices that they own. Computers are interwoven into the very fabric of every aspect of our society, and having them under the sole control of the biggest megacorporations in the world is utterly dystopian, and wildly dangerous.
Personally, I would take it a step further: any and all code that runs on products sold must be open. Not necessarily open source, but at the very least open, so that it can be inspected when malice is suspected. This way, society can make sure that the tech billionaire oligarchs giving nazi salutes aren’t in full, black-box control over our devices. Secrecy as a means of corporate control is incredibly dangerous, and forcing all code to be open is the perfect way to combat this. Copyright is more than enough intellectual property protection for code.
The odds of this happening are, of course, slim, especially with the aforementioned tech billionaire oligarchs giving nazi salutes effectively running the most powerful military in human history. Reason is in short supply these days, and I doubt that’s going to change any time soon.
Thom Holwerda,
Yeah, corporations have perverted the notion of ownership. Our reality is such that “owners” are not the real owners when it comes to who controls our devices. This is so extremely dangerous. I think that even die hard fans of the tech giants (apple ranking near the top) are becoming more acutely aware of their power grabs. but I worry we are too little too late because not enough people spoke up when something could have been done about it. Whole branches of government are increasingly acting as extensions of billionaire power. Their priority now is more tax cuts for the billionaires and soon to be trillionaires.
BTW how naive it is that firefox marks trillionaire as a misspelling!
Please note you said soon to be trillionaire does make sense that common dictionaries used by spelling checkers don’t have it yet. Forecasts are not expected that there will not be a trillionaire before 2027 and possible latter. Yes majority of billionaires on track to come trillionaires are also on track to follow Elizabeth Holmes & the Theranos into being penniless. Yes question is what will happen first the billionaire coming a trilliionaire or the house of cards collapsing in on itself as people see their real net-worth is bugger all. Yes there is a funny possibility that the first person comes a Trillionaire the next day they don’t have 100 USD to their name as their house of financial cards collapsed at the same time.
oiaohm
That’s exactly why it’s naive not to define it.
“Five Trillionaires Predicted to Emerge in Next Decade”
https://www.newsweek.com/davos-2025-billionaire-wealth-inequality-oxfam-report-2017526
Not likely. An article I read recently put it this way: they can afford to loose 99% of their wealth and still comfortably be billionaires. That’s how ridiculously skewed the wealth gap is. Unless you are envisioning a complete collapse of capitalism that effects everyone, they will never be penniless. The trump administration is virtually guaranteed to give them more favorable tax cuts and pay for it by defunding education and social benefit programs. There are many who still don’t want to admit it, but the US is becoming an oligarchy and people like Bernie Sanders have been warning about this forever. Alas, there’s no prize for being right.
Elon Musk is calculated to be overvalued not factor of 100 but by a factor of 10000. Alfman we are looking at a memecoin bubble in share prices.
When you look at all the closest billionaries to being trillionaries their value is not based on economics of profit. We do have a major financial bubble here.
Even since we have had financial markets we have always had bubbles form then burst.
There is a scary interesting point the first billionaire in USA system 2 weeks latter was not because the bubble that made them a billionaire burst. The first millionaire in the USA system 2 weeks was not because the bubble that made them a millionaire burst.
Yes first at these major markers normally equals some major upset.
This will not the collapse of capitalism its just that financial system capitalism has natural cycles of bubbles forming and bursting. The closest to trillionaires losing their wealth would not cause that big of damage we have seen worse with the property market failures and the like..
Terms like “millionaire” are country specific, and relate to the local currency.
There have been huge numbers of trillionaires holding zimbabwe dollars for instance.
bert64 To be correct zimbabwe dollars when it was massive devalued they where not using the trillionaire term. Trillion is 10 to 12 power so is million million. zimbabwe dollars
Yes million millionaire has been used a lot in countries with devalued currency. When it a million dollars to buy a loaf of bread you start counting at a million.
Yes just because you have 10 to 12 power in dollars does not mean you have the title trillionaire cecause of the second title million millionaire. Yes in zimbabwe a few people got to what was called billion millionaire yes 10 to 15. Yes we don’t have Quadrillionaire in dictionary either.
Yes a devalued currency does not use the standard aire bits for wealth. Yes you were right that it kind of country specific and currency specific if milllionaire is a person or just a sub designation. Yes millionaire as a sub designation means those countries have not had anyone they would call trillionaires or Quadrillionaires even that public listed bank balances would make you think they had.
I like things to be kept real. Musk did not give a Nazi salute. Batya Ungar-Sargon, who is not a fan of Musk by a long shot, commented on it: https://x.com/bungarsargon/status/1881439445523775961 Biden sat on a pillow on his chair. Of all things someone may do, that does not bother me. It was made a bigger deal than it should have been just as reading into Musk’s excitement was taken the wrong way.
Regarding open access to what we purchase, yes, we should have access. If we paid money for them, they are ours. At least, we cannot seem to return the products which would imply we are stuck with them.
The only items I would be hesitant to just outright allow would be things that can cause serious injury. For example, what about gas ovens? Perhaps, contain the gas functions in a black box with an open API and the rest can be replaced. It is something to think about.
sean,
A “black box” is not justifiable on safety grounds. Even if you want to argue that some devices shouldn’t be modified by owners for safety reasons, it does not follow that the code can’t be open for others to audit and see what it does. These two concepts are not mutually exclusive.
I actually do not want to argue that case. 🙂 Your idea about having the code open is perfectly acceptable to me. I was attempting to figure out the best balance for that part of it but late at night.
Telling me my eyes are lying, just tells me not to trust you. The dude was high as a kite.
From your insinuation, are you telling me that my eyes, and others’ eyes that are not even fans of Musk, are lying? How about the ADL? https://x.com/ADL/status/1881474892022919403
I have no idea if he was high or not, but that is irrelevant. He has Asperger’s Syndrome. The hate against people with disorders has to stop.
””I believe consumers, as a right, should be able to install software of their choosing to any computing device that is owned outright””
There are dangerous words here. Owned outright how do you define this. You could argue that you bought the device with a 2 year warranty under a rent/buy agreement. Yes the first 2 years while it was under warranty you were renting it so did not have the right to alter it at core levels because to perform warranty actions the provided software had to be installed. Yes you can pay rent for years in advance.
I do believe any hardware that is locked from alteration should have to be unlocked when the device goes end of life.
Lets say I rent a tractor to do some farm work. The machine prevents me from doing basic repairs….. There need to be a duty of care on anyone wanting to do locked systems where they have to be able to justify the locks.
oiaohm,
Common sense would be that hardware faults should be covered under warranty and software faults should not be. But in reality those people who have root access on their own devices end up ceding manufacturer warranty anyway – so that’s not a justifiable reason to withhold root control. I often buy used hardware, which they won’t honor warranties for anyway. It’s really none of their damn business what I do with my hardware, but unfortunately owners often find they don’t get the keys for their own hardware. 🙁
Thom is right, giving owners the keys should be legally mandatory when demanded.
Faults with anything supplied by the original supplier should be under warranty.
Some countries mandate a 10 year warranty on new build houses for example. If the paint supplied with the house starts flaking off then this is covered under the warranty, however if you apply your own paint and it flakes off then that’s not covered. But the fact you applied your own paint doesn’t alter the warranty status of any other part of the house.
When it comes to anything however, modifications should only be performed by someone competent to do so. A majority of people don’t have sufficient technical knowledge to install arbitrary software with root access, just like a majority of people wouldn’t know how to modify a house or a car safely.
So yes everyone should have full access, but only those who know what they’re doing should actually use that access. If they need to make changes and aren’t competent to do it themselves then they should hire someone else to make those changes for them. The same way it is with cars, houses, and pretty much anything.
bert64,
Yeah, I agree with you in principal, but you have to live in a country that strictly protects consumers to be able to rest assured it will be honored. Otherwise you may be left fighting the company on your own. Here in the US unfortunately there are companies that refuse. I report to the department of consumer affairs but they are toothless. You may be able to go to court or forced arbitration, but you’ll likely incur very high costs over a warranty that may not be worth it even assuming you can win.
Standards could make this a hell of a lot easier, such as how it used to be trivial to boot a live cd/disk to try completely new operating systems without even having to commit to modify the original OS. This was a fantastic way of trying things and it would be very nice if all products had similar standards… but I know it’s just wishful thinking.
If I were dictator of the EU, I’d create a 100% sales tax on all products that do not give the buyer root access. The receipts from that tax will then be given to fund FOSS projects.
Why do that and provide a window for some manufacturers to sell their devices as status symbols? It’s like that silly system in the EU that allows car manufacturers to skirt average fuel economy regulations as long as they buy “carbon credits” from some other car manufacturer.
Problem is, root access is not necessarily viewed as a bad thing in regulatory circles. As I’ve said below, some banks consider lack of root access to be a good thing and prevent their banking apps from running on “rooted” Android phones. And they are allowed to do it despite banking being a highly regulated industry. So, I’d be more worried about the EU banning root access in mainstream OSes in the name of protecting users from rootkits installed from trojans/warez.
My opinion is that root access should be available but well-hidden from average users, much like the disabling of driver signature verification in Windows. It’s there, but you can’t ship a product that relies on disabling driver verification as a manufacturer because it’s reasonably well-hidden. Similarly, average users shouldn’t be able to click “yes” on a UAC or sudo prompt and give crappy apps root access willy-nilly, so that commercial apps can’t rely on it.
Problem is, root access is not necessarily viewed as a bad thing = Problem is, lack of root access is not necessarily viewed as a bad thing (apologies)
More than a decade ago a big named company that liked to “exploit” Linux was frustrated by end users that would “unlock” and/or “enhance” their systems. In particular, their storage subsystems. For them the root cause was old school shell based init and so they needed a way to get rid of that. A userland owner of all that would better support an “all closed” style of operation.
This “problem” has been fixed.
If I had a time machine, I’d go back to year 2001 (or whatever year you consider the height of Steve Ballmer’s war against open-source), find Richard Stallman, and inform him that Windows still offers root access to users in year 2025 while the Linux-based OSes that most people use don’t (Android and IoT devices). Then I’d leave before he has the chance to go on a rant about GNU plus Linux.
This is not because Microsoft cares about the user of course (Windows Phone also had locked-down root access) but because of legacy. Still, it showcases how the “Four Freedoms” have been subverted to be enjoyed by device manufacturers, not users.
Unfortunately, I don’t have any proposal on how this could change (say in a hypothetical GPLv4) other than the OS vendor protecting their trademark (which is up to the OS vendor, not the source code authors). Sure, GPLv3 bans locked bootloaders, but manufacturers can still subvert community ROM efforts by making their hardware slightly incompatible with the norm (and requiring binary blobs for it to work). I have personally experienced this, with my HTC U11+ having a “3D sound recording” functionality that makes the audio volume fluctuate during recording when a generic camera app is used, you have to use HTC’s camera app to record video at a constant audio level.
Also, the fact Windows laptops are technically “rooted” devices showcases that banks preventing their banking apps from running on “rooted” Android devices is complete BS, but that’s another rant for another day.
Microsoft has plenty of locked down devices – see the bios on any given MS laptop, or XBox, and I’m sure I’m missing plenty else.
Yes, I mentioned that Windows Phone had locked-down root. And of course the Xbox fits the bill too. But what’s wrong with MS laptops? Have they locked the ability to disable Secure Boot or something? And are we talking x86 or ARM? Also, even that way, you still get the ability to have OS-level root for Secure Boot-enabled OSes, which is much better than the average Android phone.
But anyway, my point is, the “Four Freedoms” were meant to provide a way out of these restrictions, but they have been subverted to be enjoyed by device manufacturers, not users.
In the United States, you are allowed to completely build your own car, register it, and run it all over the road. There’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to do the same with your software. There should be no exceptions.
There may be reasons for an end user to only accept signed binaries for something they deem important, to verify a relationship they deem important. There’s no reason anyone with the interest should not be allowed to do whatever they want with their own hardware AND software. Signed binaries are fine – as long as you can opt out or in.
A side note: the fact I can’t run whatever I want on a PlayStation, is why I don’t have a PlayStation 5.
I think root on everything encompasses a few key points:
1) Give users full control of what their device does.
2) Ensure they can choose any application can run on their hardware.
3) Ensure that the security sensitive parts are securely written
4) Ensure that any source code given matches whats running on the device.
I don’t think its incompatible with those principles to compromise with companies to ensure their investment in developing the hardware still makes sense. So I would be willing to compromise on the following.
1) An additional reasonable charge to provide those facilities instantly
or
2) A timeout lock, after two years of being locked the device automatically unlocks itself allowing for all the previous features.
I think that would be fair to all parties.