friendica.eskimo.com
Valid question. You can ask this about many things:
Would the Internet as we know it exist if Facebook, AOL, and Yahoo had united to create a walled garden?
Would Macbooks as we know them today exist without an open source ecosystem? Would the company Appke exist? Would there be an iPhone?
Would the web exist without Linux? Both developed at the same time, 1991 till now, and most stuff runs on Linux servers.
Would the people who build all the hardware and software even be interested in computers had they not played with (build) computers in the 90ies? What if we had given them an iPad aith CandyCrush that just works; and not BIOS codes, cables, extension cards and drivers?
What if we had given them an iPad aith CandyCrush that just works
We'll know the answer in just a few more years here. Whole generation growing up that way currently.
I think you're forgetting where Linux was the most successful by far: Servers and Android. Server guys do what they want, if you tell them they can only use software you allow them to, they will laugh at you and buy their data center elsewhere. Android has had locked bootloaders forever (I actually think even my very first phone had one).
So maybe development would have been harder? I mean, we don't have looked bootloaders on desktop even today, not really locked at least, so it's hard to tell. Linux's main audience would not have cared I think.
Early Android (circa 2009) didn't have locked bootloaders.
Google wanted people to experiment, which was basically free research for them. Pixel's today are unlocked when purchased from Google.
Even my earliest Verizon phones weren't bootloader locked - they didn't start doing that for a few years (my last Verizon phone in 2012 wasn't bootloader locked). And Verizon is arguably the worst vendor when it comes to bootloader locked phones.
locked bootloaders are still a thing mostly on the US.
over here having them locked is the exception, not the norm.
You should go read Microsoft's attempt at excluding Linux/Unix from running on x86 using ACPI!
The 90's? Locked bootloaders would've meant people woukdve simply bought different machines without a locked bootloader.
See the IBM/Phoenix BIOS war - it's essentially the same thing. IBM didn't want to license their BIOS to everyone, so Phoenix reverse engineered it. If I remember right, IBM was trying to lock everyone to using their OS.
its good to remember computers were used mostly by the computer people back then.
now with layman using theses devices en masse, things are a bit different. they dont need the nerds ro have a successful product anymore.
Things just weren't like that then. Otherwise all PC peripherals would be locked down too, so no device drivers. That was already a problem with cheap windows crap. But the better stuff was documented.
Maybe there would be no Linux but that isn't as bad as it sounds, since BSD Unix was being pried loose at the time, plus there were other kernels that had potential. And the consumer PCs we use now weren't really foreseen. We expected to run on workstation class hardware that was more serious (though more expensive) than PCs were at the time. They would have stayed less locked down.