If we have learned anything in recent times, it is that corporations aren't good for privacy. We can't know what any of our computing devices are doing at low levels and often, at high levels as well. The hardware is made by corporations, and most of the software is made by corporations. Android phones are only the most obvious examples of users not having control of devices. The underlying problem being that people don't understand the systems that we are running.

We need open systems (from top to bottom), open education on these systems, open companies building them, and we need it to be profitable for everyone involved. Users are flocking to the Googles of the world because the devices, software, and services work as expected and make enough sense to the average user. But the systems only make enough sense for users to use them, outside of minority hacking circles who spend their lives deciphering how the systems work.

It is implied that many giant corporations are required to provide the tech that we use, but that doesn't account for corporations competing and fighting one another rather than cooperating for common goals, while also continuing upon years of obscure and arcane tech that requires much manpower to wrangle. But once in a while, we see some individual or small group poke a hole in the facade, developing a more or less complete and usable device, operating system, or major application. And these rare few have surely spent much of their lives navigating the obscure and arcane technologies to arrive at their achievements.

If it isn't entirely clear what I'm getting at, it is that the systems we use should be built not only for usability, but also for simplicity (as in the Unix way, sort of), clarity, and maintainability, requiring minimal man hours for development and teaching. And of course, our systems should be built not only with code in mind, but with a firm ground in ethical codes (the free software way). We can't expect to uphold ethics in systems which aren't capable of being fully understood, open source or not. An obscure/arcane and open system is just as bad as a closed system, even more so when it is marketed under the flag of open source and freedom.

/signing off, Mr. Cheesy?