We should have the ability to run any code we want on hardware we own

like if there are OS utopia exist that has all the advantage without the downside then everybody would use that

but people complaining don't live in reality

The hardware aspect is quite irrelevant to the whole point: the hardware only runs with software that does not respect your freedom and there's no feasible way to make the hardware run software that does respect our freedom. And of course our banks and streaming services and whatever else we need also don't offer us any software that respect our freedoms. So no, it's not about hardware, it's about free software. Always has been.

Everyone else can put on their loincloths and go back to living in flinstones-esque rock huts.

I don't think you can really solve this problem as long as there's an operating system monopoly, or even duopoly/triopoly. The lure of total control is just too great. Every operating system vendor, hell every intellectual property vendor will always dream of it. A company that becomes powerful enough to put chains on its users will do so.

From the British Raj to Standard Oil to IBM and Microsoft, monopolies are some of the most powerful forces in history. There is a case to be made that we were on a similar path with Microsoft until a combination of the Internet and a half-assed but not completely ineffective anti-trust campaign made them hit the brakes, for a while.

I think that the solution is to highlight the abuses perpetrated by the biggest tech giants specifically, and advocate for radical government action on multiple levels. #1 to break up these companies. #2, to shackle them and anyone who gets as large as them so that they can't do anything like this again. #3, publicly fund the development of competing, open operating systems.

If you are a US citizen then #1 and #2 are the more realistic paths and you should be watching the various anti-trust cases against Big Tech like a hawk, the celebrity du jour is really Amit Mehta who is scheduled to release his Google remedies any day now. You need to make it clear to your representatives that this is your top issue at the ballot box. We need a second American Progressive Era that's seasoned with digital rights and anti-megacorp sentiment and with "doomscroll" and "Luigi" having entered the vernacular I think we could be closer than many here believe.

If you are an EU or Chinese citizen you should support the development and adoption in those polities of alternative, Linux-based operating systems. In the way the South Korean government specifically encouraged the growth of Samsung into a company with a global footprint, you should do that for local companies which develop OSes that compete with Apple and Google's. These geographies fundamentally can't do much to influence the American legal system so they should instead lean into public sentiment around nationalism and sovereignty and tie these to software freedom because that is likely the only elemental, emotional force that will capture enough public attention and support. Use state-scale resources to create competition for the American tech giants and establish a balance of power, because they are assuredly your enemies at this point.

And lastly for the ten millionth time I'll say it - Stallman predicted this. He saw it all coming. He warned us. He told us what would happen and what we needed to do. It's time to listen and to think big.

No! Which is why I don't want every npm package I install to have unfettered access to my internet connection and to access all my files. If this is being exploited now, I might not even know! How sloppy is that!

> You're giving up freedom for safety.

At the limit, sure, maybe there are tradeoffs between freedom and security. But there's lots of technical solutions that we could build right now that give a lot more safety without losing any freedom at all.

Like sandboxing applications by default. Applications should by default run on my computer with the same permissions as a browser tab. Occasionally applications need more access than that. But that should require explicit privilege escalation rather than being granted to all programs by default. (Why do I need to trust that spotify and davinci resolve won't install keyloggers on my computer? Our computers are so insecure!)

Personally I'd like to see all access to the OS happen through a capability model. This would require changes in the OS and in programming languages. But the upside is it would mean we could fearlessly install software. And if you do it right, even `npm install` could be entirely safe. Here's how we do it: First, all syscalls need to pass unforgable capability tokens. (Eg SeL4). No more "stringy" syscalls. For safe 3rd party dependencies, inside processes we first make an "application capability" that is passed to main(). 3rd party libraries don't get access to any OS objects at all by default. But - if you want to use a 3rd party library to do something (like talk to redis), your program crafts a capability token with access to that specific thing and then passes it to the library as an argument.

Bad:

    // Stringy API. Redis client can do anything.
    redisClient.connect("127.0.0.1", 6379)

    redisConnCap = systemCap.narrow(TCPConnect, "127.0.0.1", 6379)
    redisClient.connect(redisConnCap)

This would require some PL level changes too. Like, it wouldn't be secure if libraries can access arbitrary memory within your process. In a language like rust we'd need to limit unsafe code. (And maybe other stuff?). In GC languages like C# and javascript its easier - though we might need to tweak the standard libraries. And ban (or sandbox) native modules like napi and cgo.