I share your sentiments about how software that was designed to be "open" with the best intentions (often done so before the world was as connected as it was),

I share your sentiments about how software that was designed to be "open" with the best intentions (often done so before the world was as connected as it was), is now facing problems. A big part of the solution is getting rid of old and now insufficient practices and replacing them with new models that fit into the current world. For example, in-process plugin models with e.g. dynamic libraries loaded into the app are highly problematic, but can increasingly be replaced by out-of-process plugin executables (using very controlled communication channels like explicit shared memory regions), coupled with the proper sandboxing for those plugin executables, individually. As an aside, access to the Camera and access to Photos is already separate on iOS, you have to approve both separately (which becomes apparent if you use Instagram, for example). Sometimes when I want to save an image, instead of allowing access to Photos, I copy the image into the clipboard.