No, humanity in general. There has been a decades-long battle between the powers that would love to have everything tightly controlled by the manufacturer (or a consortium of corporations with admissions for a lofty fee) and users who are aware of the advantages of open computing. It's a dividing line between actually owning a computing device and something like leasing it under certain conditions even though you paid for it. As everybody household has more and more computing device, and as these become much more user-hostile, transparency and openness is needed more than ever.
"and as these become much more user-hostile, transparency and openness is needed more than ever."
Yeah, I agree to that.
Which is why I do not agree to a statement, that a new and open OS will hurt humanity, because it does not have the same restrictive licence, you would prefer.
If anything, this melodramatic mindset is really hurting the struggle to really own your hardware
Secondly, to really own your device, we need open hardware anyway. Everything else is a weak compromise.
I see your point but Linux was actually designed in this way to be an open operating system, and using closed pieces of code in it, while possible, is discouraged by developers and is causing problems for their users. What is problematic to some (=companies) is actually a boon for others (=users). Designing an operating system specifically for the sake of using closed code in the system is not good news for openness, no matter how you put it.
But yes, all things considered, it's a bit similar to Apple using BSD as a base of Mac OS X - it had some positive effects on the overall ecosystem.
> You mean the world is the linux ecosystem?
No, humanity in general. There has been a decades-long battle between the powers that would love to have everything tightly controlled by the manufacturer (or a consortium of corporations with admissions for a lofty fee) and users who are aware of the advantages of open computing. It's a dividing line between actually owning a computing device and something like leasing it under certain conditions even though you paid for it. As everybody household has more and more computing device, and as these become much more user-hostile, transparency and openness is needed more than ever.