A lot of this feels like it overlaps with the right to repair. Repairing a physical device is really about changing it and being able to change it — in particu

A lot of this feels like it overlaps with the right to repair. Repairing a physical device is really about changing it and being able to change it — in particular, not being obstructed from doing so. That feels very close, in spirit, to being able to run one’s own software on the device. Another natural extension is if one can run one’s own apps then that right ought also to extend to the entire device — the OS and the firmware. The app / OS boundary is of interest to the computer scientists, but functionally there isn’t any distinction to the end user between the code that renders the heart under the cat video, the code that notices me touch the screen, the code which sends the JSON “{like:10295892983}” over the network, and the code which turns that message into radio waves.