
The coming civil war over general purpose computing - Create
http://boingboing.net/2012/08/23/civilwar.html
======
fmstephe
When I read articles like this my fears always move straight to a future where
it has become harder to program for play.

I appreciate that this concern is somewhat superficial compared with some of
the issues raised in this article, but I feel profoundly grateful to be able
to tinker with computers in my spare time.

I feel this more deeply than the fear that my music collection might not
survive a computer upgrade or that the government might be watching my
internet habits.

I think that we, as programmers, enjoy a luxury that is almost unreproducible
in any other field. My wife is a structural biologist, and as much as she
loves what she does you can't crystallize proteins in our living room.

I truly hope that however this unfolds that my son will be able to hack on
something, freely and happily (if he so desires) in the future.

~~~
nirvana
This is one of the reasons I'm such a fan of Apple, despite all the misguided
gruff they get here.

Apple always ships free (or near free) development tools with their systems.
In the Apple II days it was built in to the ROMS. Nowadays on the Mac AppStore
you can download Xcode, for free. (though at one point I think it was $5 for
some reason.)

You can develop any mac apps you want, and run them to your hearts content,
and you can develop iOS Apps and run them in the simulator (to distribute
these apps via apple's store, you only need a $99 membership, which is pretty
affordable, compared to the past when it cost $500-$5,000 for such suites of
software.)

Its never been easier to be a hacker! And that isn't going to change anytime
soon, at least on Apple systems.

(All the apple bashing on HN is from the google distortion field, it isn't
reality.)

Hell, you can even develop iOS apps without using _any_ apple tools and
distribute them on the web to anyone, for free, and without any regulation by
apple. You just have to use javascript and web technologies, but the full iOS
UI is available, including things like touch tracking, gyroscope, GPS, etc.

People are so adamant that the iPhone is locked down that many people don't
even know this, but it has been in iOS since day one-- in fact it was how
Apple wanted everyone to develop apps originally (outside apple's control!)
but people kept demanding native apps so apple created the appstore, and the
curation of that is a consequence of not wanting malware. (Hard to write
javascript malware.)

~~~
ekianjo
There's no such thing as "near free". Free is a boolean variable, either it is
free or it is not free.

Apple does not distribute any free tools to develop and run software for their
systems, period. If you want to be a free hacker, it's Linux or Windows,
currently. And as another person responded to you, you cannot use the UI
elements via javascript and all. Get some docs, seriously.

~~~
gizmo686
Windows hacker? Finding information about system internels is more often then
not an easter egg hunt on google.

~~~
chao-
Say what you will about Windows (and I will even join you), but Microsoft can
put out some alarmingly competent docs. I say "can" and not "always do",
because where they are lacking, I agree it can be frustrating. That said, in
one such scenario the solution for me was to get in touch with a PM at MS and
say:

"You designed [system #42]. I'm trying to accomplish [nifty goal] that is an
obvious extension of what you suggest that [system #42] should be used for.
You said some examples are included with the most recent Windows SDK. After
downloading it, I found no such example and the problem seems a little
intractable. What gives?"

The response contained an attachment of the overlooked/unincluded examples,
and some clarifications about the system I was working with and even explained
that some of what I was doing was explicitly NOT possible, for very good
reasons (for the record, an earlier version of Windows Search).

I say this as a desktop Linux user, where at times my only recourse for "Why
won't [application x] properly fullscreen?" is to go and do just what you
suggest: an easter egg hunt on google. Furthermore, the end-all-be-all
solution is the same as it is with our Windows example: get in touch with
someone at the project and ask for clarification. The difference lies in that
with one case, it's someone's job to provide clarification for the system they
designed. In the other case, the possibilities are too varied to speculate on
(e.g. unmaintained project, antisocial developer).

~~~
gizmo686
What you are talking about sounds more like windows developer than windows
hacker. Still, almost all of my programming experience has been based on
greping source trees in place of documentation. When I do get good
documentation (it does happen) I don't know what to do with it and still look
at the source.

What really sets open source apart for me in terms of hacking is that I can
change the way any component operates, instead of having to jerryrig what
would be a simple change using external APIs.

------
mark_l_watson
I just watched the whole thing. I liked how Cory Doctorow acknowledged that
some of these problems he didn't know the answers to but he seemed satisfied
just to get the conversation started.

Near the beginning he flashed a picture of an iPad as an example of a device
that records everything you do and there is nothing you can do about it. I had
never thought of that; instead I had viewed the iPad as a nice little device
that probably would never be hacked, but in a sense it is already hacked as
far as my privacy goes.

I happen to like Apple products, running OS X on my Air and just Linux
(Ubuntu) on my MBP. From a freedom and privacy perspective I would really like
to a bit more fully control my devices by running Linux but I find I can get
some types of work done just a little faster using OS X rather than Linux. DRM
is not a problem for me on Linux because my Samsung Galaxy S III can play
Netflix as can the Nexus table.

I went so far as signing up as an Apple developer early this year to get an
early version of Mountain Lion and bought an iPad, but listening to Doctorow
and other people who think more deeply about personal rights and freedoms than
I do, I am more often thinking of paying the small Linux productivity tax.

BTW, if Apple continues to rule digital markets, it would be ironic if
Microsoft saw a business opportunity to make Windows devices respect personal
freedoms.

~~~
tikhonj
Microsoft seems to be doing exactly the opposite--they are making their
devices _more_ locked down in what appears to be an attempt to emulate Apple.

The restrictions on WinRT make this entirely clear and unequivocal--Microsoft
is asserting complete control over the device you purchased. You can't install
a different OS and you can't install any software outside of the App Store.

If anything, they're threatening to be even worse than Apple by conflating the
somewhat free Windows on x86 with the entirely locked-down Windows on ARM.

~~~
rapind
While I agree this sucks, and I'm personally not interested in Windows devices
myself anyways, I'm not sure how you draw the conclusion that this is _worse_
than Apple with iOS... It's exactly the same no?

MS is the old tyrant (continuing it's tyrannical ways). Apple is the new
tyrant. If either of them are better than the other, it's pretty much
irrelevant since they are both so far beyond what I would describe as
acceptable behaviour.

------
16s
After reading this, I'm reminded of a famous Ben Franklin quote, ___"They who
can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve
neither liberty nor safety."_ __

DRM and walled gardens are often said to reduce malware and provide safer
computing, but at what cost? As technologists, we can change this and have a
say. I'm concerned though that it may already be too late.

~~~
sliverstorm
As I understand it, Franklin was talking about policies of appeasement.

He was not, after all, a stone-cold anarchist- yet folks insist on
interpreting that quote as if he was.

~~~
CapitalistCartr
Appeasement is what we'd all be doing if we allow locking down the BIOS. It
isn't to solve the malware problem; it isn't to make computing "safe"; its to
put OUR computers in the ownership of a few large corporations.

These same corps have long used bureaucracy, paperwork, a maze of rules, large
costs to shield their business model from real competition, and that's how
they'll do this. Getting the privilege to have access to our own property will
be obstructed by all these barriers. Barriers which are minor for a large
corp, but insurmountable by private citizens or open-source programmers.

To be suspicious of those who have long shown a disregard for the greater good
isn't promoting anarchy; its plain good sense.

------
msg
Rainbows End: "No User-Serviceable Parts Within". Technology is depicted as
black boxes all the way down. Cars shut down when driven outside of sanctioned
roads. LARP content unavailable unless you have the rights.

Reflections on Trusting Trust: "You can't trust code that you did not totally
create yourself." The proposal is that Trusted Computing is supposed to defeat
this truism. I have my doubts.

I hope that we will be able to do irreparable damage to Trusted Computing and
make it untenable. This large jail will be broken out of like all the others.

We already live in a world where the rich can buy new legs and survive HIV
better than the poor. The poor are already shamefully misused by social,
legal, and economic systems stacked against them. Adding computers just adds a
more explicit level of control.

The solutions to the new problems are the same as the solutions to the old
problems: enfranchise the poor, make government responsive to them, give them
the tools for mobility and independence. The hackers will continue opening the
technological ways. As a kind of Gotterdammerung last resort, the printable
gun, the darknet, PGP keys.

And that means that the problems are more scary because of future shock and
culture shock than anything else. They're Hollywood nightmares about the
future, but the future turns out to be, good and evil, the same old thing.

------
SudarshanP
Some day, Owning a computer that cannot be bricked by govt or "Intellectual
Property Owners" at their whim will regulated like the brewing of alcohol. You
will have to pay through your nose to run even lame apps. Maybe even your
government can get a cut so that it can go chasing weapons of mass destruction
using the money extorted from the gullible masses.

------
parasubvert
The issue I have with arguments from folks such as Cory is that they presume
too much in favour of openness. Many prefer to be regulated rather than have
to make decisions on every little detail, that's arguably the whole Apple
appeal in a nutshell vs. Linux, and why it's so productive. (Distros like
Ubuntu arguably do this too at a much smaller scale.)

Cory is effectively advocating "technology survivalism", where no company will
be your trusted for keeping your computers "safe" and "not lying to you". I
think it's rather utopian. As far as I can tell, web-of-trust approaches only
work in the software world, the hardware manufacturer ultimately has to be
trusted to some level, either de facto by consumer belief or de jure by
regulation.

Ultimately, his whole premise about "owner freedom" vs "user freedom" may be
fatally flawed. It assumes a) Apple wants to control both owners and users to
do what they want, and b) owners must be able to control what happens on
devices, and this is a necessary precondition to user freedom. I would argue
a) Apple just wants to help users with a better experience and b) it's
unlikely owners will ever be technically savvy enough to control things, they
will always want to delegate things to some degree -- even technical people do
this, looking at the number of devs that use Apple laptops.

Cory also oversimplifies the ownership problem. No device owner actually
"owns" the software they install, they license it - even with open source.
Apple arguably has been the a great force for "user freedom", by constraining
what "owners" (i.e. software developers) can and can't do on Apple devices,
thus enabling freedoms to the users themselves -- freedom from malware, bad
user experiences such as poor battery life, etc. They enable the end user to
work around restrictions on content available on the native device by
providing a completely open and high quality web browser to get at anything
they want in a sandboxed environment. But they also allow the device owner to
restrict user actions in the "open web" with (e.g.) parental controls.

Apple's restrictions have little to do with controlling device owners --
they're about improving the user experience.

Clearly the device owners trust Apple today, but Apple could fairly easily
move to a TPM-based "certainty" approach where owners get to pick their App
Store, if that's what consumers eventually want, and they lose sales over it.
But, for now, the market doesn't seem to be arguing in favour of this kind of
nuanced approach.

edit: typos

~~~
veidr
> _Apple's restrictions have little to do with controlling device owners_

I would think you were making a joke if not for the earnest tone of your post.
But, come on, that is a ridiculous statement to make.

We had free as in freedom, free as in beer, and then Steve Jobs came up with
free as in "freedom from porn". You appear to buy into that doublespeak
redefinition of freedom without irony.

The Soviet Union made a similar to give people freedom -- from class
distinction, religious persecution, etc., and it used the same logic. (And was
just as true.)

Apple's restrictions are _all about_ controlling device owners to make Apple
more money. (Otherwise they would be "suggestions".)

You may not install apps that don't pay Apple 30% of their revenues. You may
not install apps that compete with Apple's favored apps. You may not even keep
functionality you've already bought from Apple's store and been using, if
Apple realizes after the fact that it conflicts with their lucrative hardware
licensing deals (Airfoil Speakers).

I'm not saying there aren't user-experience benefits to be had from a locked-
down experience; there are, and Apple obviously knows it.

I'm saying freedom doesn't what you think it means, and I don't think even
Frank Luntz could make it mean that.

~~~
parasubvert
You seem to be under the impression that phones once were free & loose, and
then Apple locked them down. Phones never were free - carriers controlled what
went on them, and what features were used. Apple opened devices up to a level
never before seen - no more carrier crap pre-loaded, and a serious push to
improve data pipes and 3G availability throughout North America. Not to
mention an app marketplace NOT controlled by the carriers, and an web browsing
experience that doesn't require you to be snooped on by WAP gateways.

Do you not still see the (baseless) grief Apple gets from carriers about how
their phones are "data hogs"? Or how the media breathlessly claims the retina
display is going to clog up all of our bandwidth from higher resolution video
and pictures?

Phones were always locked down heavily, Apple blew up that up to a large
extent, but not completely, of course, as they are in business.... But today's
variety of walled gardens are mostly untouchable by the carriers.

> Apple's restrictions are all about controlling device owners to make Apple
> more money. (Otherwise they would be "suggestions".)

No, the restrictions are all about curating an experience. Suggestions require
choice. Most people don't want to make choices on how their phones work, they
want to be handed experience with most decisions made for them, and for
popular variations to be tweakable. "Opinionated software".

> You may not install apps that don't pay Apple 30% of their revenues.

Well, yes, they are capitalists, shame on them.

> You may not install apps that compete with Apple's favored apps.

That sucked, I agree, but that's changing. Chrome is out for iOS. Alternative
Email clients are out. Apple generally is known for good customer service
according to most customer satisfaction surveys, and presuming these people
are semi-rational beings, that usually implies Apple actually listens to them
(eventually).

> I'm saying freedom doesn't what you think it means, and I don't think even
> Frank Luntz could make it mean that.

You seem to be confusing political freedom with freedom to violate others'
property.

Firstly, you do realize that you have political freedom -- people are
completely free to jailbreak their phones, no police will come after you. If
you violate your carrier's T&Cs they can fire you as a customer, but that's
due to years of historically poor regulation of telecom in the USA.

Secondly, none of the software you use, that you haven't written, is owned by
you. All owners of that software have a restriction on your behaviour with
that software, including free or open source software. You have never been
completely free when you use software. Thus, degree of openness is just a
feature. Apple is trying to find a balance that people care about. Naturally
developers & technical folks don't like losing the freedom to tinker, while
most people couldn't care less. Apple needs to maintain a developer community
that tinkers, though. So it's a balancing act.

~~~
klez
> All owners of that software have a restriction on your behaviour with that
> software, including free or open source software.

Quoting the GNU GPL (v2, since it's less legalese-esque):

> The act of running the Program is not restricted

~~~
parasubvert
But the act of copying, distributing, or modifying said software is
restricted. Much more so than, say, the Apache license. Those are behaviours
too.

The GPL controls you "in your own interests", or to quote them:

> To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to
> deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights. These
> restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for you if you distribute
> copies of the software, or if you modify it.

The point is that you don't own the software you run, the owner has a claim on
your freedom. In GPL's case it's for what they feel is the greater good (more
free software, and limited free-loading).

~~~
klez
Well, so does a law that prevents you from selling your labor as a slave, but
I don't think you would see that as bad.

For the fact of 'owning' the software... well, as long as you don't
redistribute it, who cares. And if you do restribute it, why should you take
away from your users the same freedom that was given to you? (by making your
software proprietary or by limiting the use they can make)

~~~
parasubvert
What does slavery have to do with this? There's ample discussions over the
past 10 years over why many people disagree with the approach the GPL takes as
being too restrictive and freedom-restricting, and not actually in the spirit
of "open". I don't have to even argue that, it's been done before ad nauseum.
Of course many support the GPL and it's approach. The point on GPL is that
"freedom is a feature", it's all in the eye of the beholder of what's more
important - free to use & redistribute, or free to use but only redistribute
under certain circumstances. The choice has massive implications for people
using that software - I've seen many a review of weeding all GPLv3 or AGPL
dependencies out of a product for this very reason.

The original point is that Cory seems to think that protecting user's freedoms
first requires securing device owner's freedoms, though the two come into
conflict regularly, and he doesn't have clear answers of how to resolve that.
I'm suggesting that he's not looking at ownership broadly enough.

~~~
klez
Fair enough, as you say it's in the eye of the beholder.

What I'd like is a precise use of terms. Saying (as most do) that GPL is
restrictive is imprecise. As you better put it, GPL is restrictive on
redistribution.

As for ownership, I'd like you to expand on what you think about it. As you
say Cory didn't look broadly enough, so I'd like to read further opinions
about it.

------
anigbrowl
This misses the mark, as I've said before. Privacy is the #1 problem; just as
computers and the internet make it trivially easy to copy other people's IP
(agree with the existence of IP or not, it's a fact of the modern
marketplace), it also makes it easy for other people to monitor you, whether
those others are governments, corporate proxies for governments, corporate
proxies for private interests, or private actors. Hyperbolic anxiety attacks
over lockdown? GMAFB - the modern world is a hacker's nirvana compared to the
functional rigidity that was the norm during the home computer revolution of
the 1980s. Back then, electronic devices were much more expensive than today,
so that while non-digital things like VCRs were far easier to explore with a
soldering iron, they were also engineered to within an inch of their lives and
were not easy to repurpose to other tasks.

The whole kerfuffle about 'general-purpose computing' is a foolish
distraction. It's like citing the existence of ready-made wood furniture as
evidence of a war on general-purpose carpentry. General-purpose computing is
easier than ever because it's accessible at a wider range of scales than ever
before, from geek-friendly microcontroller kits to distributed clustering
architectures. The issue is privacy, and the fact is that the US doesn't have
a well-defined legal standard for it, nor any authority dedicated to its
preservation.

On the up side, while this is going to lead to a good deal of conflict I have
hope that most of that is going to take place within markets and via
legislatures.

~~~
gizmo686
I've always viewed privacy and user freedom as 2 sides of the same coin. The
lack of privacy on the internet is not because of the nature of the internet,
it is because when you go to a website, you send unnesasary information that
you are not aware of, and the current model is that the website owns your
data.

------
parasubvert
tl;dr

Once Apple loses and Android (or "open platforms", whatever that means) win
the general purpose computing war, and every technology illiterate device
owner is telling their phone, computer, tablet boot loaders what software
sources they trust (Ubuntu, ACLU, EFF, and Wikileaks, natch), we still have a
problem.

Computers are everywhere, from vending machines to subway turnstiles, to
pacemakers, and that users are going to be easily oppressed by owners'
restrictions. Thus we need user-overrides to be able to overcome this
oppression. This is all about the effectiveness of decentralized decision
making and thus was supported by both Hayek and Marx for opposite reasons.
Thus libertarians shouldn't whine about property rights violations. In fact
they should support it, because it's just a natural extension of why the
"general purpose computing war" was won in favour of openness, it was all
about regulation (by Apple, or the Government) vs. owner's property rights to
run what they want on their computers. And property rights will win (we
presume).

(Insert lots of debatable philosophical asides, historical allegories, and
modern anecdotes to justify this thesis.)

In summary, defeating the forces of regulation (:hint: Apple :hint:) is what I
call the "war" on general purpose computers, and this war is all about
defending owner's rights to run what they want on their computers. And though
I don't explicitly say it will be won by the forces of openness, it's
completely obvious that the world will determine that regulating computers is
the wrong way to solve problems and we'll all be happily using trusted
bootloaders that only run owners' approved code (not what Apple, or the
government, wants us to run).

The following war after THAT one is won, will be a "civil war" for users
rights... and that I can't solve. "Agreeing to disagree on this one isn't good
enough. We need to start thinking now about the principles we'll apply when
the day comes. If we don't start now, it'll be too late."

[end synopsis]

I can't quite respond to this yet... words fail me.

edit: Rewording on tl;dr

------
meric
I read it this morning and have had a thought:

He talks about determining the

sole

user of a computer.

He also says that a Boeing 747 and a Car are both examples of computers.

So, the thought I had was, when you have 1000 passengers in a automated train,
it would be impossible to determine the

sole

user of the train.

It may also not be wise to allow

any

user of the train to control the software.

?

Therefore, there will be no civil war and users will be doomed to not have
control over devices they are using.

The "debate" is akin to asking "What happens when slave owners finally wrest
control of their slaves from the government? When someone is being served by a
slave, that slave, is really, acting for their owner's interest. The slave
could be eavesdropping on conversations, poisoning food on behalf of the
owner, not acting to the user's interests to the exclusion of everyone
else's."

What about computers that are not controlled by any entity, period. ?

I'm not saying that computers _ARE_ slaves, just that the current debate
resembles one _ABOUT_ slaves. I'm not talking about "Strong A.I." either, just
software that can provide a service and earn enough money to pay for the CPU
time they use.[1]

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_agent>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_agent>

[1] This is probably the wrong answer, but just a thought.

~~~
jarman
Problem is not depriving users of control, problem is transfer owner's control
to third party.

So (in your example) it's not about giving train control to passengers, it's
about train being controlled by transport company who bought it, not by
manufacturer or some other third party.

------
ivan_ah
At around 51:30, there is an off-topic question from the audience, which leads
to an great answer:

Q: What can you say about making a living writing things. Will you advise it?

A: If you want to make a living writing things I would advise you to stop
trying, because that is a bit like saying “I want to make a living buying
lottery tickets”. Sounds like a If you don’t have a plan B for earning a
living, you have the wrong career. Writing is a very very high-risk
entrepreneurial venture that almost everyone who tries it fails at. Some
people have succeeded using CC and some fraction without using CC, but they
are rounding errors against all the people who try to earn a living with
writing.

Ouch! As a founder of a textbook startup it makes me wonder on this Monday
morning. I guess he is talking specifically about writing fiction. Textbooks
must be OK, Right?

------
yk
Likely an important talk, however I think it is googled-down too much compared
to the original talk at the 28C3 [1]. ( Android as model of a free OS is just
a tribute to the organizers methinks.) In the 28C3 talk Cory developed the
argument against DRM ( and locked down computers) more carefully.

[1] <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUEvRyemKSg>

~~~
hammersend
"Android as model of a free OS is just a tribute to the organizers methinks."

Yeah, I'm sure the fact that you can download the source code to it, make any
changes you want, and redistribute that source code or that you can install
any app you want on an Android handset whether it's in the blessed market or
not has nothing to do with it being open. Nothing at all.

------
mindslight
He lost my interest halfway through when talking about TPM and failing to
examine Remote Attestation. Yes, owners having control of the platform
verification keys is quite important. But even in that world, if the TPM has a
user-inaccessible _signing_ key, the battle is set to be lost. If the sheer
majority of the consumer market trusts a handful of OSs, banks et al will
start _requiring_ use of those "trusted" OSs to access online services. We're
then right back in the same situation with no control over the computer in
front of you.

I think in the sheer majority of situations (excepting eg ATMs), fail-dead
tamper resistance is a terrible goal. Ultimately, you either have to trust the
physical security of the hardware in front of you _or_ a third party service -
there is no middle ground. Evil maid attacks are local, targeted, and user-
mitigable through physical security and tamper-evidence. The requirements of
trusted third parties are centrally developed, systematic, and mandatory.

------
protomyth
Sadly, I believe a lock down of computers is inevitable. Look at what happens
when there is a security incident or some perceived violation of privacy. Lots
of press and a visit by your company's C-level executives to Capital Hill so
lawmakers can put on a circus. If you believe Android will continue to be more
open than iOS, then I would just say a couple of more visits to DC will cure
that.

I wonder how many fortune 500 address books kept in Outlook of their
salespeople were uploaded by an Windows app? Put the machine in your pocket
and the cries for safety and privacy win. These Post-PC devices are amazing
tools except for the people who make them sing and dance.

I really would love a open hardware platform just for programmers.

------
dave9999
Have you ever thought about having to fight for your rights to install Linux?
Not 'call your congressman' fight, but actual take to the streets, civil war,
fight, for that right?

------
expralitemonk
In the future, if a developer wants to write and distribute software without
having to ask permission from 10 different platform manufacturers, he will
have to stick with web apps.

------
chm
TLDR please?

------
monochromatic
That site design gave me an aneurysm.

~~~
artichokeheart
I was put off at first but discovered that by using Page Down it was more
slide show-ish (and I'll admit kind of cool) and less headache inducing.

------
Steko
tl;dr:

DRM doesn't work and is bad

regulation doesn't work and is bad

the gubmint's jackbooted thugs will force cochlear implants on you to make you
patriotic

because the market won't demand free as in stallman computing I've decided to
frame it as a human rights issue

