I don't know--a personal computer, these days--a computer designed to only be used by one person, to only have one account and to be completely personalized to their use--is not a desktop, notebook, or tablet; it's a phone. And the majority of phones run Android. I think we're already there.
Android itself is "open", not "free"; the result is that the users of Android--hardware manufacturers, not the end customer--have the right to restrict the rights of others to modify that software and benefit from its openness, a right which many vendors take advantage of: Android is thereby not an example of "free software" (with the exception of the Linux kernel it bundles, which sadly doesn't provide users much benefit in this specific context as, in addition to supporting opaque binary blobs in drivers, it continues to use GPL2, which failed to protect against the threat of hardware manufactures designing locked bootloaders).
Nvidia et al alone will probably keep that impossible in the mainstream markets, until we get (out of my area, may be misusing words) 1080p decoding on a comfortably multitasking CPU or SOC.
To me the biggest threat to computing freedom is no longer your operating system vendor but "the cloud". Most people are just giving their data away to companies that can do whatever they want with it including delete it forever when they go out of business.
I'm not trying to dust off my foil hat or anything, but the OS war is almost over, it's the "who own's your data" war now. And I mean OWNS your data.
Well they are moving to everything. Their idea that eventually you will be able to use your phone as your work computer. Go to the office, put your phone to docking station (that has monitor and keyboard) and work.
That wouldn't be too bad, actually... All my desktop has over my phone that matters for (web) development is a faster drive (SSD), other than that I just need a dev VM somewhere.
I just spent decent bucks on my first new PC dev and gaming in years. Phones are nice and helpful too but nothing beats a PC (Ubuntu PC not Windows PC) for real work or real gaming fun. Windows 8 and UEFI threw me for a loop but deleting all the Windows partitions and turning all the UEFI stuff in the BIOS off finally worked. :)
"Our work is driven by a belief that software should be free and accessible to all." We can um and ah about what free and accessible means, but Mark Shuttleworth continues to push the goodwill of the community, testing where its breaking point might lie (see the new secret features development system, and Amazon ads/spyware built into Ubuntu 12.10). Hence, this "Bug #1" is just empty posturing that attempts to ride on the rapidly evaporating goodwill of the community.
I may not agree with all of the decisions Shuttleworth makes, but this is unfair. The "secret development process" is completely normal - people work on features for a while, but don't make them public until they're really good so that other people will be excited. What he's doing is offering to let other people into his secret process before he normally would.
Similarly, although it's true that Ubuntu by default sends your searches to Canonical, which then anonymizes them and sends them on to Amazon, it's also true that you can turn this off whenever you want. And that you have the ability to send your searches anywhere else you want, including your personally-owned index of products. And that Canonical has clearly stated that the Amazon lens is an example of a much larger class of things that they want to enable via the dash. So yes, sending all of your searches over the network by default is bad for privacy, but that doesn't make Ubuntu less free.
No Ubuntu's #1 bug right now is it is incredibly buggy. I kidd you not every five minutes I get a system error. I am running a machine from last year and everything. It has become a horrible OS and it sold out.
It is recursive but currently that is my #1 problem with it. I know I am not alone in that either. Back then yeah Ubuntu was awesome but if this keeps up then even less people will adopt it. Canonical needs to get it together.
I fail to see how a world with iPads and Chromebooks replacing the traditional PC is any better. Instead of the unhealthy fixation on Microsoft, concentrating on user and developer freedoms regardless of vendor is better.
The year was 2004. Windows Vista and iPhone were 3 years away, iPod mini was 1 year away.
Also, Chromebook is not that bad, is it? Chrome OS is almost fully free (I am not sure about the details and the difference between Chromium OS and Chrome OS though). Much better than Windows XP back then.
Your data is less free on someone else's disk than on your own disk. That's really what you're getting at. But that isn't OS-dependent. You can just as well manage to Facebook yourself all up using Windows. Meanwhile you can use Chrome OS to access network services on your own personal server and not use any cloud vendor at all.
What you're really complaining about is the lack of good, easy to use personal servers, which makes the unavailability of client-local storage encourage you to be dependent on cloud vendors. But that's a separate issue from an OS that somewhat sensibly discourages you from keeping important and possibly sensitive files on a non-redundant portable device which is easily damaged or stolen and has no automatic backups.
I know attention spans and principles tend to morph into some crazy shit in the perception of those who are not as blessed with them, but this one I haven't heard before.
But the zero-sum ideology espoused by many open source advocates is grating. There isn't a war, there's just the computers that people use. People are lazy and don't think much about the implications of the tech they use. Impassioned rants against the current dominant tech don't actually change anything, they're just cathartic preaching to the choir.
If people don't think about the implications of their choices, then that's not the fault of rants, and anything you might suggest to change the situation can all be done while ranting. As Weizenbaum said in an interview I listened to a while ago (I tried to find it in written form but no luck so far), computers and all technology can be used to make people more free, or less so. That however requires awareness, which is the opposite of marketing and euphemisms. If not even the people who (supposedly) know what is going on speak up, the people who have little clue regarding these matters have simply no chance. And that people are lazy does not excuse any of it, anyway... a lot of horrible (or "just" banal and sad stuff) happened and happens because people are lazy, lazyness is quite the invisible killer that way.
I think I have a tough time as both a software developer and a consumer getting behind "the world should be built on free software."
I will gladly pay for the best fit for me, it's how resources are transacted in an economy. You pay for the things that are valuable to you, and you should pay at the rate at which they are valuable.
Why should software be singled out as free? I agree that I benefit from open source and I try to contribute when I can but it still stands that I don't mind paying for a lot of software that is classified as open source.
Every time I read about open source software, I always feel like I'm missing some piece of the puzzle.
To paraphrase: It is free as in freedom not as in beer.
The point is, that if you buy a car, then you are allowed to drive it anywhere and anyhow you want. ( Within legal limits, but the thought that Mercedes would preclude you from driving north of 38° N is simply ridiculous.) You may even paint it in a new color or install a new engine. By contrast if you license software it is not clear what you are allowed to do with it. Are you allowed to use it in a nuclear power plant? ( Java is excluding itself from such an environment.) Or are you allowed to modify the software, after commercial support did run out. So free software is first of all software which is licensed to you in a closer analogy to the rights you get by buying a car.
With this in mind, there is a interesting side effect of free software, namely that you are allowed to sell it just as you are allowed to sell your car. But unlike cars you also have the means of production for software, which means that all it takes for free software to be free as in beer is one guy who is willing to give copies of his copy away for free. ( This is of course exactly the same as with commercial software, the difference is, that free software realizes that abundance is a feature.)
So if you are willing to pay for software and you find that free software suits your needs, perhaps after trying the software, then you should consider a donation for the developers of that software or for the FSF.
I don't think the car analogy works well in this case, as both the acts of manufacturing and driving the vehicle have numerous laws and regulations - making it more akin to a software license agreement than not.
Once I, as a consumer, have purchased a car, I do not care about the regulations on manufacturing. It is my car. I can repaint it. I can remove the logos. I can mess with the engine.
Yes, there are emissions regs in many states. But these are not simply dictated by the vendor of the car, to make me keep buying the car, or paying extra each time I want to drive into a new state. There is at least some reasonable justification (if cell phones belched smoke, they'd be regulated the same way).
Software is subject to very strong network effects, which can lead to monopolies. i.e. applications are made for Windows, so consumers need Windows computers, so developers need to make apps for Windows. Similarly with IE6, Microsoft Office, and increasingly so with Android. Once it's established, the platform owner can rake in money simply by charging users & developers to meet on a common ground.
I don't think all software needs to be open source, but I'd like the basics - operating systems, web browsers, word processors, etc. - to be open source. It's much easier to explore different ideas if you can use existing code and keep compatibility with millions of apps/web pages/documents.
It helps if you recognize software as a public good in the economic sense: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good -- a healthy software ecosystem is much like having good street lights and roads.
Expansive use of nonfree software is like having tollbooths and occasional dark alleys: it works just fine for some, but there's some loss to society when the economics prevent it from being inclusive.
Looks like this ticket will remain opened for quite a long time.