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> Either you choose a somewhat open platform, or you choose privacy. One would have thought/hoped that they were tightly coupled. I think this comes down to tw
by lucideer 8y ago
> Either you choose a somewhat open platform, or you choose privacy. One would have thought/hoped that they were tightly coupled.
I think this comes down to two things:
If we define "polish" as: consistency+predictable UX+aesthetics
1. openness involves interoperability, and polish is more expensive to achieve when interoperability is a requirement
2. the primary market for polish tends to value exclusivity, which—while not entirely contradictory to openness—tends towards non-openness
The combination of these two means that when you focus on polish you end up with a product line that is likely to be non-open.
The fact that the primary market for polish also tends to be economically comfortable also conveniently leads to margins that allow for privacy, but I think this is just a happy accident.
It's my belief that if we want a private + open platform we need to:
- Accept very large sacrifices* in polish because doing both is only economically viable when catering to a market that doesn't want/need openness
- Choose a different economic model where resources are available to do both simultaneously.
* Also worth noting that sacrificing quality and/or UX can lead to less privacy given that privacy depends on security and security depends on both quality, and also on UX to prevent social attacks.
- ISL 8y agoI'd argue that the GNU/Unix text interface is open, interoperable, and highly polished. The key ingredient is time. Modern windowing systems are also very similar. A Windows 3.1 or early MacOS user would have no trouble using a computer today. Touch and phone interfaces will get there, too, as both software and culture evolve together. I can't wait for, and would love to support, the Debian of phone architectures. In past HN threads, it has been suggested to me that the real blocker for a good open phone OS is at the hardware/kernel level. That was the state of the hardware environment in the late nineties and early 2000s. Give it time, effort, and support, and a great and open OS will emerge.
- danieldk 8y agoI can't wait for, and would love to support, the Debian of phone architectures. In past HN threads, it has been suggested to me that the real blocker for a good open phone OS is at the hardware/kernel level. That was the state of the hardware environment in the late nineties and early 2000s. I would like to be that optimistic, but I am not. The PC has always been a fundamentally open platform and hardware has been supported by many OSes for a long time. When I was young, we would run MS-DOS, DR-DOS, OS/2 and Windows 3.x (which was strictly spoken not an OS). After 1994 I also ran Linux and BSD and I never had any real problems hardware-wise. There was a difficult time around the turn of the century with WinModems and printers that only supported Windows. But that was more of a temporary regression.
- ISL 8y agoI remember working hard for good graphics-card support and perpetually rolling my own kernels to support even year-old motherboards. The biggest blocker in our experimental labs for open-source software was always hardware drivers. These days, linux is extremely common and generally well-supported.
- minkiu 8y agoI agree with you mostly, but I think the OS is there (Linux) we just need more mainstream Open Hardware, and hopefully Librem 5 will be the one to push things forward.