"In 1994 my friend Koling wanted to talk to his girlfriend in Taiwan, and to save long-distance bills he wrote some software that would convert sound to data pa

"In 1994 my friend Koling wanted to talk to his girlfriend in Taiwan, and to save long-distance bills he wrote some software that would convert sound to data packets that could be sent over the Internet. We weren't sure at the time whether this was a proper use of the Internet" I also have a girlfriend in Taiwan, and met her while working there for 4 years, at a job partly made possible by PTT BBS (a very old Telnet web forum). I'm so grateful for VoIP, fast Internet connections, and being able to chat to her every night (at 5:20 of course, which sounds like 我愛你 in Mandarin). "If you want to attract hackers to write software that will sell your hardware, you have to make it something that they themselves use. It's not enough to make it 'open.' It has to be open and good." Are there any such platforms nowadays, that aren't restricted by a walled garden? (says he, typing this on a 2014 MacBook Pro running 10.13, while charging his iPhone 4S running jailbroken iOS 6.1.3).