3 ms·
Game consoles existed (maybe not 30%) but the cell phone industry was already a nightmare.
by sleepybrett 3y ago
Game consoles existed (maybe not 30%) but the cell phone industry was already a nightmare.
- vkou 3y agoWhen cell phones were first getting off-the-ground, they were more like garage door openers - specialized tools for specialized settings. There is a lot of academic debate that the FSF and the EFF can spill on the subject of interop and software freedom for garage door openers, but practically, it wasn't a big social problem. Nowadays, cellphones are primary computing devices for a lot of people, with a large number of supporting and symbiotic industries around them. The various platform owners have drawn particular lines around their products, and have largely defended them in anti-trust courts - but there's no reason that those lines should be allowed to be where they are, or won't expand in the future. What stops a platform from, in addition to exerting full control over the software that runs on it, also choosing to exert similar control over the packets that are sent or received by it?