I think we need to zoom out more, even. The focus on freedom is too narrow - freedom at the cost of becoming disconnected is a raw deal.
What we want is power. In the desktop era, having source code gave us power, so we associated the two and demanded the former - but this obviously hasn't translated to the cloud.
You can't download a Facebook profile and then re-upload it somewhere else and still be connected to all your friends etc. That lock-in gives Facebook power over its users: proportional to how much they need what Facebook gatekeeps (e.g. "all the news about my grandkids is on there").
When I want to stop using something, but I can't, that's power someone holds over me. In my case, that's Google search, GMail, and Android. I actually hate the latter two, and I've tried leaving them all, but here I am. What they've got in common is that they're all protective layers over what I need to stay connected to the outside world despite being highly dysfunctional (i.e. discoverability on the web, email spam, and phone hardware).
Because of this, Google's got me in a way that - because of open source - Microsoft never could. Whatever comes after open source needs to address that power delta directly. We need choice, but also connection.
What we want is power. In the desktop era, having source code gave us power, so we associated the two and demanded the former - but this obviously hasn't translated to the cloud.
You can't download a Facebook profile and then re-upload it somewhere else and still be connected to all your friends etc. That lock-in gives Facebook power over its users: proportional to how much they need what Facebook gatekeeps (e.g. "all the news about my grandkids is on there").
When I want to stop using something, but I can't, that's power someone holds over me. In my case, that's Google search, GMail, and Android. I actually hate the latter two, and I've tried leaving them all, but here I am. What they've got in common is that they're all protective layers over what I need to stay connected to the outside world despite being highly dysfunctional (i.e. discoverability on the web, email spam, and phone hardware).
Because of this, Google's got me in a way that - because of open source - Microsoft never could. Whatever comes after open source needs to address that power delta directly. We need choice, but also connection.