Cars used to be 'user servicable', you could take them apart and put them back together again, or repair them with simple tools.
The further you integrate something the further away you get from 'user servicable'.
Due to emissions controls cars were equipped with injection systems and motor management, and then car manufacturers discovered 'lock-in', how to make money on obfuscation in stead of openness.
Computing is doing the exact same thing.
Gone are the simple serial and parallel interfaces, and in their place you get undocumented docking connectors and other 'magic'.
The only thing that keeps things open to some extent is the fact that the internet arrived just in time to save us from complete lock in hell. The protocols are standardized enough to let devices talk to each other.
So that's where you're going to find your new 'openness', at the protocol level.
Serverside it will take a long time to go 'closed', but on the client side I would expect to see more and more devices that are closed as much as possible.
Gaming hardware has already gone that way, mobile phones started out closed ('to protect the networks', as if client side security would be good enough for a carrier).
It's not a good development, but it will happen.
Tech savvy people can only push back by releasing their own open devices, the open source variety of hardware.
Cars used to be 'user servicable', you could take them apart and put them back together again, or repair them with simple tools.
The further you integrate something the further away you get from 'user servicable'.
Due to emissions controls cars were equipped with injection systems and motor management, and then car manufacturers discovered 'lock-in', how to make money on obfuscation in stead of openness.
Computing is doing the exact same thing.
Gone are the simple serial and parallel interfaces, and in their place you get undocumented docking connectors and other 'magic'.
The only thing that keeps things open to some extent is the fact that the internet arrived just in time to save us from complete lock in hell. The protocols are standardized enough to let devices talk to each other.
So that's where you're going to find your new 'openness', at the protocol level.
Serverside it will take a long time to go 'closed', but on the client side I would expect to see more and more devices that are closed as much as possible.
Gaming hardware has already gone that way, mobile phones started out closed ('to protect the networks', as if client side security would be good enough for a carrier).
It's not a good development, but it will happen.
Tech savvy people can only push back by releasing their own open devices, the open source variety of hardware.