Is it your device or theirs?
You may have noticed that the number of posts related to freedom and privacy has decreased significantly. That’s because I’ve mostly given up on people caring about their own privacy, and it feels significantly like I’m preaching to the choir, with the eyes of the mostly apathetic congregation glazing over.
Still, what the fuck.
Free software is an issue I mostly stay away from, since a lot of the free software rhetoric comes from either a very commie point of view or simply misguided mantras like information wants to be free! (no, information doesn’t want anything), but this sort of Apple nonsense is an excellent example of what pushes people to the extreme of claiming that all software should be free. If I own a device, for which I paid with my own money, it is my property. I should be allowed to run whatever the hell I want in it. That doesn’t mean that I can necessarily redistribute Apple’s code, but come on, insisting on turning customers into criminals just because they want to use software other than that blessed by Apple on their devices is idiotic at best and corrupt at worst. They still haven’t learned that extremism on one side will engender extremism on the other.
Listen to Lessig, people. It’s a fight you can’t win, and you’ll only end up alienating those who so dearly wish to give you their money. ProTip: that’s not so smart a move in a recession.
Non-ranting information at the EFF link above, as well as the Free Your Phone site.