> yes but: the % of computing that people do that can be engaged in, explored, enhanced, modified continues to drop.
Yes, the number of closed systems is growing, but so is the number of open ones.
So many commercial projects these days are based on open source software or even open hardware. I'd argue that the total set of complex systems to take apart, study and admire has never been larger than today.
> So many commercial projects these days are based on open source software or even open hardware.
In the 90's & aughts, Linux & open source was obsessed with "free desktop", with becoming a world-class environment for computing.
But today my feeling is that 90%+ of open source development exists to help & equip corporations with better ways of making products & services. The only users the software is concerned with are other developers, businesses, most of whom will leech value & grow without contributing anything at all. But none the less, a couple folks persist, try to bring honor to the world, by being really good at something, by- for whatever usually very foibled reason- caring.
> I'd argue that the total set of complex systems to take apart, study and admire has never been larger than today.
It is cool that folk can go check out android, get in the source, kick the tires. It's colossal, a beast, but it's still cool. Having access to both an SDK & the means to go look beyond is compelling.
Alas I still feel like the software world about us, the software we use, is radically out of reach. We spend enormous time on social networks, chatting, writing, sending media. None of these systems are at all observable, learnable, explorable. It matters that the digital matter about us is invisible, far off, unseeable. Except as the shadow of puppets, projected against a wall, opposite to where we are chained. It matters that society cannot see the mechanisms about us. How the "natural sciences" are supposed to carry on now that we've obstructed ourselves from our reality all about us is a mystery to me; we have only a legacy of engagement, a history of man the tool maker. Now we are man, the tool-made. Software has become the firm prison.
All of this is because none of it adds measurable value to the user over other products, and when it does, it doesn't apply universally. Using Linux on the desktop won't be a better experience than Windows until Proton is at 99% compatibility with all games and Wine runs all windows applications seamlessly, so until then, we're stuck with Windows and the scripts[0] Windows users have built up over the last 20 years. And, until a fully-open-source phone means you can be just as productive (or unproductive) as you can be on an iPhone, consumers are going to pick the better product. Social media is the one breakthrough with Mastodon being a fairly widely-used product, however, most people really don't care about "can I see what my social network is doing" and just want a place like Twitter to grow a following or a place like Parler to spread conspiracy theories.
This is, of course, because FOSS doesn't have money. Apple spends billions on R&D and talent a year, and because of that they continue to make absolutely breathtaking technological leaps that directly increase consumer value (see M1 battery life and performance). FOSS, on the other hand, doesn't have a few hundred full-time developers and thus something like a non-android open source phone operating system becomes a delusional pipe dream. Unless you can really sell privacy and openness to the masses, you're not gonna win when it comes to consumers choosing the best product (and Apple is already hoarding the buyers who value Privacy over configuration/openness).
I think this view is extremely limited, a view only through the filter of what is. It, alas, is reflected in the 90's & aughts focus on the Free Desktop, which too often was an attempt to recreate & compete with the better-funded commercial giants on their own ground.
Open source has different virtues. Interoperability, extensibility, unix small-pieces philosophy are all extremely strong technical advantages that allow us to build together, to intermix & co-create systems in more organic & less top-down monolithic hierarchical ways. They allow more exploration & organic growth. The possibility space is big, & more so, allows diverse fronts of exploration & growth, which beget only more possibilities & creativity.
But the big win, the strongest strength of open source is sociological & cultural. Malleabe software environments - what we lack - blur the line between user and developer. Being unable to peer into things, to see the operations & systems, being forever treated as an end user by the OS, by the application, & so so few of them offering extension points, & usually only at high power-user levels, creates a culture of tool-used, of processed individuals, who lack agency & the potential for agency. We are creating a weak culture, that lacks critical review, critical eye, that has the power to consider the world about them. We can't even begin to imagine the alternatives, what a Free Software world would look like, where there are not such hard lines, such enclosing confinements all around us.
We can not know what value we are missing by not including humans in most processing. It takes an act of faith, in human potential, to know & to seek a more human-inclusive, open form of computing. I for one believe this is critical to insuring mankind's legacy as an intelligent, conscious reasoner of the world can remain intact for generations. Following this path will create different forms & assemblages of software than what we could imagine today.
Yes, the number of closed systems is growing, but so is the number of open ones.
So many commercial projects these days are based on open source software or even open hardware. I'd argue that the total set of complex systems to take apart, study and admire has never been larger than today.