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@joelvanderwerf @mattly right; so not to get too political here, but the value of software has always been able to be classified as one of two possibilities: either it makes it easier to control people, or it empowers people to do things they couldn't do before

modern megacorp software is firmly about the former camp while just making enough pretense towards the latter to retain a facade of legitimacy (sometimes it does accomplish the latter, but only incidentally; it's never the point)

but legitimately revolutionary software puts the second one front-and-center, and that has always meant putting control in the hands of the user, and since the distinguishing property of software is that it can be reprogrammed, it almost always means making it possible for the end user to reprogram it

I would argue these properties are fundamentally intertwined and we only miss the obvious because our imaginations have been shaped by spending too much time in a land where megacorps make the rules