3 ms·

I'd say that vendor lock-in is unrelated; any platform can have it regardless of the openness of the platform. Jailbreaking is not part of the lock-in. It's a

I'd say that vendor lock-in is unrelated; any platform can have it regardless of the openness of the platform. Jailbreaking is not part of the lock-in. It's a way of doing more stuff with the hardware than the original software allowed you to do. The fact that the term has 'jail' in it doesn't make the users more locked in than they already were, they were free to enter and leave without jailbreaks. Tangentially, I used to jailbreak my iphone because it offered me useful extra features that I couldn't otherwise get (e.g. a SSH client back when Apple didn't have such apps). But I haven't felt the need to jailbreak iOS for years now, because just about everything I could want to do with the system is already possible. Finally, 'jailbreaking' is effectively another word for 'security hole'. If my iOS device can be jailbroken, it's actually a worry to me, not a benefit. Google's chromebooks do offer a better alternative to this, whereby you can flush out ChromeOS by making a physical change to your device (in my case, disassembling the laptop and turning a particular screw). But it still can be a security risk; if there was some physical means of replacing iOS on a phone with alternative software, you could never trust that a secondhand iPhone hadn't been maliciously tweaked to preload malware.

mikegerwitz 9y ago
> Jailbreaking is not part of the lock-in. It's a way of doing more stuff with the hardware than the original software allowed you to do. That's precisely what rms is referring to when he says "jail": https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-apple.html#jails https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-apple.html#jails "allowed you to do" is the key phrase in your sentence---software should never tell you that you can't do something just because its developers don't want you to do so (we call that an "anti-feature"); software should be a tool to serve the user, not hold their computer/device hostage to exert control over them.
- dpkonofa 9y ago
  That link is really terrible and GNU should be embarrassed to be publishing something like that. Referring to people as "iMonsters" and the general tone of that page make it seem very childish. Some of those points are even worth discussion but it over-simplifies them to the point of being worthless and easily dismissible. That's a real shame.

mikegerwitz 9y ago

> Jailbreaking is not part of the lock-in. It's a way of doing more stuff with the hardware than the original software allowed you to do. That's precisely what rms is referring to when he says "jail": https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-apple.html#jails https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-apple.html#jails "allowed you to do" is the key phrase in your sentence---software should never tell you that you can't do something just because its developers don't want you to do so (we call that an "anti-feature"); software should be a tool to serve the user, not hold their computer/device hostage to exert control over them.

dpkonofa 9y ago
That link is really terrible and GNU should be embarrassed to be publishing something like that. Referring to people as "iMonsters" and the general tone of that page make it seem very childish. Some of those points are even worth discussion but it over-simplifies them to the point of being worthless and easily dismissible. That's a real shame.