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https://hackaday.com/2025/10/22/what-happened-to-running-what-you-wanted-on-your-own-machine/
https://archive.ph/6i4vr
When the microcomputer first landed in homes some forty years ago, it came with a simple freedom—you could run whatever software you could get your hands on. Floppy disk from a friend? Pop it in. Shareware demo downloaded from a BBS? Go ahead! Dodgy code you wrote yourself at 2 AM? Absolutely. The computer you bought was yours. It would run whatever you told it to run, and ask no questions.
Today, that freedom is dying. What's worse, is it's happening so gradually that most people haven't noticed we're already halfway into the coffin.
The latest broadside fired in the war against platform freedom has been fired. Google recently announced new upcoming restrictions on APK installations. Starting in 2026, Google will tightening the screws on sideloading, making it increasingly difficult to install applications that haven't been blessed by the Play Store's approval process. It's being sold as a security measure, but it will make it far more difficult for users to run apps outside the official ecosystem. There is a security argument to be made, of course, because suspect code can cause all kinds of havoc on a device loaded with a user's personal data. At the same time, security concerns have a funny way of aligning perfectly with ulterior corporate motives.
[...] The walled garden concept didn't start with smartphones. Indeed, video game consoles were a bit of a trailblazer in this space, with manufacturers taking this approach decades ago. The moment gaming became genuinely profitable, console manufacturers realized they could control their entire ecosystem. Proprietary formats, region systems, and lockout chips were all valid ways to ensure companies could levy hefty licensing fees from developers. They locked down their hardware tighter than a bank vault, and they did it for one simple reason—money. As long as the manufacturer could ensure the console wouldn't run unapproved games, developers would have to give them a kickback for every unit sold.
[...] Then came the iPhone, and with it, the App Store. Apple took the locked-down model and applied it to a computer you carry in your pocket. The promise was that you'd only get apps that were approved by Apple, with the implicit guarantee of a certain level of quality and functionality.
[...] Apple sold the walled garden as a feature. It wasn't ashamed or hiding the fact—it was proud of it. It promised apps with no viruses and no risks; a place where everything was curated and safe. The iPhone's locked-down nature wasn't a restriction; it was a selling point.
But it also meant Apple controlled everything. Every app paid Apple's tax, and every update needed Apple's permission. You couldn't run software Apple didn't approve, full stop. You might have paid for the device in your pocket, but you had no right to run what you wanted on it. Someone in Cupertino had the final say over that, not you.
When Android arrived on the scene, it offered the complete opposite concept to Apple's control. It was open source, and based on Linux. You could load your own apps, install your own ROMs and even get root access to your device if you wanted. For a certain kind of user, that was appealing. Android would still offer an application catalogue of its own, curated by Google, but there was nothing stopping you just downloading other apps off the web, or running your own code.
Sadly, over the years, Android has been steadily walking back that openness. The justifications are always reasonable on their face. Security updates need to be mandatory because users are terrible at remembering to update. Sideloading apps need to come with warnings because users will absolutely install malware if you let them just click a button. Root access is too dangerous because it puts the security of the whole system and other apps at risk. But inch by inch, it gets harder to run what you want on the device you paid for.
[...] Microsoft hasn't pulled the trigger on fully locking down Windows. It's flirted with the idea, but has seen little success. Windows RT and Windows 10 S were both locked to only run software signed by Microsoft—each found few takers. Desktop Windows remains stubbornly open, capable of running whatever executable you throw at it, even if it throws up a few more dialog boxes and question marks with every installer you run these days.
[...] Here's what bothers me most: we're losing the idea that you can just try things with computers. That you can experiment. That you can learn by doing. That you can take a risk on some weird little program someone made in their spare time. All that goes away with the walled garden. Your neighbour can't just whip up some fun gadget and share it with you without signing up for an SDK and paying developer fees. Your obscure game community can't just write mods and share content because everything's locked down. So much creativity gets squashed before it even hits the drawing board because it's just not feasible to do it.
It's hard to know how to fight this battle. So much ground has been lost already, and big companies are reluctant to listen to the esoteric wishers of the hackers and makers that actually care about the freedom to squirt whatever through their own CPUs. Ultimately, though, you can still vote with your wallet. Don't let Personal Computing become Consumer Computing, where you're only allowed to run code that paid the corporate toll. Make sure the computers you're paying for are doing what you want, not just what the executives approved of for their own gain. It's your computer, it should run what you want it to!
(Score: 5, Touché) by sjames on Thursday November 06, @03:03PM (8 children)
The new corporatism. All of the disadvantages of Capitalism AND all of the disadvantages of Communism.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by AlwaysNever on Thursday November 06, @08:53PM
That's called Capitalmarxism. All the worst qualities from both systems. In Capitalmarxims there are not rights or lefts, there are only those up and those down.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Thursday November 06, @08:54PM (6 children)
And the actual mechanical difference between "new corporatism" and "capitalism" is what?
Not posing this question as a "gotcha". I hear this exact idea all the time and don't understand the thinking. What laws are the former but not the latter? Or vice versa?
Capture of government power always seemed like a natural consequence of wealth accumulation to me. And disproportionate wealth accumulation seemed like a natural consequence of capitalism.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by sjames on Friday November 07, @12:08AM (5 children)
Ownership. In Capitalism, you buy the product and then you own it. You are free to repair it if needed or improve on it if you know how. You can give it to someone else or use it long past the point most consider it obsolete. You are free to tell others how they can repair their widget.
Under corporatism, even though it is yours, the OEM will enshitify it as you sleep. Or maybe just permanently disable it, perhaps because they'd like you to buy a new one now. Or perhaps they won't sell you one at all. Your only choice is to 'buy' it and pay for a subscription to keep it running until they get bored with it. Or maybe you bought it with a permanent licence but they decided 3 years is 'forever' and now you'll need to pony up.
You might wonder where the courts are with all these shenanigans going on? Me too.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ikanreed on Friday November 07, @12:31AM (4 children)
Those aren't legal or structural differences. They're outcome differences.
And those matter, and I share your belief in the importance of owning what you buy, but I don't understand your prescription for how to make capitalism and not arrive at "new corporatism" at a societal level.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 07, @01:07AM (2 children)
I agree with both of your points, but I blame software "copyright" and insanely strong copyright laws.
I don't think software should be protected under copyright. Some version of patent, maybe. But copyright is far too strong and just not appropriate for machines, only for human-made creative works (books, songs, etc.)
(Score: 2, Insightful) by anubi on Friday November 07, @07:47AM
It's obvious software has become enshittified.
I think you are spot on that the enabler of all this enshittification is an interpretation of copyright law regarding inability to verify what the code is instructing our machines to do.
Remember what happened when pet food manufacturers all got together to game the advertised protein assay of their product by mixing in melamine?
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=melamine+pet+food+recall+of+2007 [duckduckgo.com]
Think of the money they could have saved by just lobbying Congress to make it illegal to find out what's in the cat food, same as how lobbying Congress resulted in having laws passed to make it illegal to reverse engineer code that's messing up a machine.
No wonder we are having so many issues with bad code.
This problem could easily be fixed by a stroke of congressional pens.
What we have now is much like making it illegal to read and understand a contract, yet assume responsibility of honoring it. Our computers read and execute their code, yet the copyright holder expects "hold harmless" clauses for what his code does to be honored.
I believe one should not be able to enforce anti-reversing, electronic-lock removal, anti-verification activity unless they also agree to accept full liability and remedy for their code behaviour in exchange for that right of denying others the right of inspecting what they got in exchange of considerations paid.
If I buy a book, I should be able to read it, even if it was meant for my machine. What I cannot do is copy it and sell it to others. I strongly consider the COPY of said book to be mine, for my use, and mine to do whatever I want ..including modification, even drilling holes in it, or feeding it to a goat. I would say the same for a couch that I wanted to modify. Maybe it was too low, high, or wobbly and needed more glue.
I don't have the couch guy coming into my house to mess with my couch.
This crap has gone on too long already and frankly, I am surprised at the complacency of people to tolerate this.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday November 07, @06:04PM
Notably, in the early '80s that was a genuine legal question. A key point in the early days of the decline of capitalism was when the courts bent over backwards to grab their ankles to allow software copyright through sophistry.
(Score: 3, Informative) by sjames on Friday November 07, @05:59PM
But it IS a legal difference. Under Capitalism, government in pursuit of it's duty to regulate the market and to enforce ownership would rule that the sneaky enshitification after purchase creates a legal liability to the owner. Disabling a feature after the fact would be treated no different from sneaking in to the owner's home with a hammer to damage the product.
Meanwhile, the courts would be a LOT more skeptical of DMCA claims surrounding functional cases where people copy a crypto key (or crack it) to enable 3rd party repair or enhancement parts in a device. It might even question the legality of locking out 3ed party parts in a device the manufacturer no longer owns (having sold it to a consumer). We might even see cases where manufacturers run against truth in advertising laws for not prominently disclosing that the device becomes a paperweight should they (at their sole discretion) choose to shut down a server.
It is very much a legal difference.
You may even recall the history of DeCSS for DVDs. Under capitalism there wouldn't have even been a question about 3rd parties making a drive that could play a DVD video. Further, there would be no lawsuits flying about ISPs "allowing" copyright violations by their customers.
I have no idea how involved you might have been in technology in the early '80s, but I'll remind you (or tell you for the first time) that copyright protection of the machine code resulting from compilation (that is, software) was legally questionable in itself. Publishing a binary patch to commercial software that would disable license management was not even a grey area, it was free speech. I had a right to publish the patch. You as a licensee of the software had a right to apply it. The onus was on you (not me) to make sure you actually held a license to the product.
Compare to now, where even in cases where there is no question of legal ownership, selling mod chips for game consoles can land you in hot water. That is, I can get in trouble for selling you a chip that changes the behavior of a game console that you bought fair and square.