But you do have a point - I suggest you lobby your MEP/Senator/MP to ban totally walled gardens or to use anti trust to split the app side of Google and Apple etc from the parent - this is what caused IBM so much trouble in the 60/70's
I don't think TPM or walled gardens are a political problem, but more a technical and marketing problem. Lobbying for legislation that prevents alternative marketplaces from being locked out of a particular ecosystem doesn't actually mean people will use them en masse, or even know they exist. For example, despite Android's open nature, Amazon Appstore is very unlikely to ever beat Google Play because most people don't switch from the default. Similarly, Internet Explorer remained the most popular browser up until lately, despite alternatives and European legislation. Google Chrome is now the most popular browser, but it took an expensive ad campaign to make Google Chrome happen, not legislation. Firefox is trailing in last among popular web browsers!
Increased adoption of FOSS is really the only solution. It only becomes political when FOSS is legally restricted.
OpenOffice/LibreOffice suck for what I do with Office: Write scripts that exchange data with other applications, in particular, operations research software. It is a pity, because Python is a superior scripting language than VBA, but for the most part, developers of optimization and simulation packages have voted with their feet to make it easier for their programs to exchange data with Excel and Access, not with OO/LO Calc.
Thing is, it's use cases like this that are hindering adoption of Linux on the desktop, and I feel sad that these points of friction still exist; they shouldn't. <stallman-clone>We need, in part, widespread adoption of free, open source software to help maintain privacy, personal security, and freedom. It's use cases like yours that need to be taken into account and accommodated. Until this happens, and migrating to something like Ubuntu is problem-free and frictionless, our computers aren't free, and we, as a society are less free and more vulnerable to malicious government entities. Also, the era of the cloud as we know it has to end!</stallman-clone>
> Thing is, it's use cases like this that are hindering adoption of Linux on the desktop, and I feel sad that these points of friction still exist; they shouldn't.
I am a happy Arch user at home. There is no non-free software installed on my personal machine. Even for my operations research work, when I do it using my machine, I prefer using free software (e.g., GLPK for optimization and Aivika for simulation) over the proprietary alternatives, because free software developers do not pull crap like "The professional edition can only run models with up to 2000 variables. If you need more, buy the enterprise edition."
Sadly, at work I do not get to pick what tools I use. Customers do not want to give up Excel and the proprietary software designed to interact / exchange data with it.
In any case, my original comment ("OpenOffice/LibreOffice suck for what I do with Office") was not meant to be a characterization of free software in general.
> <stallman-clone>We need, in part, widespread adoption of free, open source software to help maintain privacy, personal security, and freedom. (...)
Five years ago or so, I might have dismissed you as a lunatic; but, these days, I find myself increasingly agreeing with this point of view. I have seen OS X evolve from a somewhat restrictive but overall very convenient OS (Leopard and Snow Leopard) to an OS openly designed to limited what users can or cannot do (Lion, I have not used Mountain Lion). Windows has undergone a similar path (beginning with the Windows Genuine Advantage thing).
It is quite a feat that proprietary software has become so restrictive that I, someone who still does not place software freedom too high in his priority list, actively seek to use free software over its proprietary counterparts.
> (...) Also, the era of the cloud as we know it has to end!</stallman-clone>
But you do have a point - I suggest you lobby your MEP/Senator/MP to ban totally walled gardens or to use anti trust to split the app side of Google and Apple etc from the parent - this is what caused IBM so much trouble in the 60/70's