Isn't that a little naive and idealistic, though? I love FOSS software as much as the next HN user but, for the vast majority of it, it only does the most basic tasks possible and, with few, rare exceptions, gets abandoned or obsoleted when the developers decide that it's not worth their time to work on it anymore. The market can't and won't solve every issue/need/deficiency that people have and, even with your example, the number of issues that every single one of those desktop replacements had dwarfed most of the benefits that using them had. For the vast majority of people that aren't tech nerds like us, the "locked down system" is preferable because it gives an incredibly consistent, polished experience for 99% of the use cases people need it for at the expense of the ability to customize it to your heart's content.
It's the same situation as the loss of headphone jacks and removable batteries. Some of us care deeply about those things but, antithetically to the point you've made, the market has decided that those things are no longer important to the vast majority of people.
> I love FOSS software ... the vast majority of it, it only does the most basic tasks possible and, with few, rare exceptions, gets abandoned or obsoleted when the developers decide that it's not worth their time to work on it anymore
This is just as true of paid, closed source software. And when it gets abandoned, you can't fix it if it's important to you.
> For the vast majority of people that aren't tech nerds like us, the "locked down system" is preferable because it gives an incredibly consistent, polished experience for 99% of the use cases people need it for at the expense of the ability to customize it to your heart's content.
I think that macOS is a great example of a system that is closed enough that a non-technical user will get the polished experience they're looking for, but allows technical users to get under the hood and customize it to their needs. Of course, it isn't open enough for some people, but it is open enough for a great many very technical people.
>This is just as true of paid, closed source software. And when it gets abandoned, you can't fix it if it's important to you.
It's not true of most paid, closed source software, though, while it is true for most open source software. At least in the former, the money people pay for the software directly contributes to its longevity and sustainability.
To be clear, not advocating for FOSS here, in fact almost the opposite, I want the full force of capitalism to be free to solve these problems without arbitrary barriers erected by big tech gatekeepers.
It's the same situation as the loss of headphone jacks and removable batteries. Some of us care deeply about those things but, antithetically to the point you've made, the market has decided that those things are no longer important to the vast majority of people.