I’m sick to death of “x isn’t really yours”, “you don’t really own x”. Nerds think that it’s a great pinch of dramatic language to make their point, but I guarantee you that it always comes across is tiring opinionated pedantry. Can we please, please, stop it.
Why are you sick of it when the statement is true?
OP is highlighting an example of software being used to redefine what ownership means - from you pay, it is yours to do as you wish to you pay and it is, highly conditionally, yours to use within an ever changing envelope defined by an evolving terms of service agreement and ecosystem with progressively more anti-features that are not clearly communicated at any stage of the purchasing process and rarely seem to benefit the user aside from 'security'.
Feels like the type of changes outlined in the post are the very definition of "x isn't really yours".
As others have pointed out this is an extremely sneaky way to do this. It isn't Google doing it just enabling the ecosystem to do it, with the net effect being the same.
Funny, when I tell people that line (usually in response to a request for support with something that the real owner deliberately broke), they usually respond “Huh, I never thought about it like that. Do you have any suggestions?”, and then we have a useful discussion about software freedom and the tradeoffs with convenience and reliability that are necessary these days.
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I’m sick to death of “x isn’t really yours”, “you don’t really own x”. Nerds think that it’s a great pinch of dramatic language to make their point, but I guarantee you that it always comes across is tiring opinionated pedantry. Can we please, please, stop it.
Why are you sick of it when the statement is true?
OP is highlighting an example of software being used to redefine what ownership means - from you pay, it is yours to do as you wish to you pay and it is, highly conditionally, yours to use within an ever changing envelope defined by an evolving terms of service agreement and ecosystem with progressively more anti-features that are not clearly communicated at any stage of the purchasing process and rarely seem to benefit the user aside from 'security'.
Feels like the type of changes outlined in the post are the very definition of "x isn't really yours".
As others have pointed out this is an extremely sneaky way to do this. It isn't Google doing it just enabling the ecosystem to do it, with the net effect being the same.
Funny, when I tell people that line (usually in response to a request for support with something that the real owner deliberately broke), they usually respond “Huh, I never thought about it like that. Do you have any suggestions?”, and then we have a useful discussion about software freedom and the tradeoffs with convenience and reliability that are necessary these days.
So, no, I will not stop it.
What's your alternative?