Comment by jraph

Right, and anyway, when you get some software, you should be able to fix/improve it yourself if you want to and need to, and redistribute the fix to other people who might be interested. You also should be able to study the software provided to you before running it if you want to.

Most people don't want to actually do that, but could anyway benefit from the inspection and fixes coming from third parties.

And when I buy some piece of hardware, I expect the manufacturer to fully support the device, as you said, when used the way it was intended to, but let me use it another way if I want to (which the reliance on closed binary blobs does not allow).

Moreover, it's time we consider it mandatory that the user has access to the code running on their device. People are not dumb. More and more, people want to know where their food come from and how it is produced. The same transparency should be obvious for what the computer do and how it is built.

If some things theoretically require the user not to see the code, maybe these things should not exist in the first place. "Oh, here is a product! But for your own good, you do not get to know how it works and what it does or does not do behind your back." This does not follow.