Skip to main content

Walled gardens are not desirable...

I wonder why people runs to walled gardens, and convinces themselves that there is no better way to do things other than they way fed to them by the owner of the walled garden.

Even though they know at some level that they are giving up many freedoms, they gladly do it just to have the most pretty gadget on the blog. They'll anything to comply to what the owner of the walled garden wants them to comply with, even when they don't fully understand what they are giving up to be part of the walled garden.

What bothers me the most of this system is the fact that you have to give any freedom to even modify, or install, third party apps that aren't approved to begin with by the vendor by default. The choice of whether doing it or not is taken from the user without the ability to opt out without voiding the warranty, or being liable of being taken action against by the vendor.

The truth is that walled gardens are desirable on only a few cases, and for a minority of users. The interests of the majority of users are better served by having free and open gardens, where a wide selection of apps are offered by a wide selection of vendors who choose to serve any particular garden.

Let the users be the ones that select the vendors who have the best products. That's the way it should work, and the most healthy way for the ecosystems to work.

Having an open garden helps apps evolve more organically, according to the changes of user needs and wants. Vendors shouldn't be making that choice for the user in any way, shape, or form. Yes, having educated users requires some time to do, but it's something that should be done.

At the end, who knows the users needs other than the users himself?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Machenike and Linux Mint: quite a nice combo.

I've been using a Machenike L16A  with Linux Mint  as my daily driver for four months now, and I must admit that I'm impressed with how good the experience has been so far. The Machenike was recommended to me by a close friend about six months ago, since I told him that I was looking for a new laptop. He had bought one a while ago, and said that it was a solid machine. Not only that, Machenike laptops were quite a great value for the money since they are significantly cheaper than comparable laptops from the competitions. And to be honest, when I got my laptop i expected to be so, but not to the extent it has been so far. After four months, my laptop feels really snappy and the performance is just great. And since I upgraded to Linux Mint 22 Wilma, it only has gotten better. One of the areas where I see most improvement, in on the Bluetooth connectivity. It connects more consistently with the three Bluetooth headphone I use, and now I can see how much battery the headphones I...

Machenike L16A: a great value for the money.

I recently got a Machenike L16A to replace the HP laptop I've been using for about 4 years now, and it has been quite a good upgrade. The value for the price has been excellent, it has really felt like an upgrade. Specially going from 8Gb of RAM to 16Gb. I specially notice the better performance when at work, since I use a remote desktop. I simply don't see as much slowdowns on the same use. Most of the time, at work I've the remote desktop app, Firefox , Thunderbird , Spotify , or sometimes Rhythmbox , open at the same time and having 16Gb of RAM gives the performance I need since at time around 6-7Gb are used. I also feel the AMD Ryzen CPU has been quite an upgrade, since it has more cores and threads than the Intel CPU my HP laptop has. That makes for a better user experience. But, where I see the better user experience is on the keyboard, and display side of things. The keyboard keys got stuck often, making the track pad unusable and characters to repeat themselves. ...

Linux Mint going for the long-term support model was the right choice.

Ever since I stared using  Linux Mint  with the long-term support mantra with the version 19 Tara release, I've come to prefer Linux distros  that use development model rather than distros that release updates more often with shorter support windows. Even though I upgrade to the new Linux Mint release as soon it becomes available, knowing that I don't have to rush it and that the testing to make sure nothing is broken with the new release is a bit more intense, gives me feel a bit safer about thing will continue working as I used to and expect them to. Besides, all the apps I use are updated as continuously. As such, I don't need to worry using versions of those apps that fall behind. Not only the that, with updates to Linux Mint come as needed and the point releases keep bring the big releases that weren't included at the original release of the OS. For my needs, Linux Mint cover them all, and it gets better with time. With each release, Linux Mint keeps feeling like ...