zlacker

Nope. In the 90s we also had tons of closed code on our computers, namely the BIOS, proper firmware embedded in plethora of peripherals (Disks, Ethernet cards, Microcode in the CPU, etc.), yet due to computing constraints, this has been only tried in forms of Pentium 3 Serial Numbers + Windows APIs + IE6.

However; courts, Free Software Movement and alternative operating systems plus Mozilla stopped this.

Now all of them are under attack. Esp. Free and Open Software Movement is being enshittified with a process which we can call as "Rewrite it in Permissive Licenses, so companies can hire you while closing down the ecosystem".

We really need a flood to clear this mess.

>>bayind+(OP)
> In the 90s we also had tons of closed code on our computers

Sure, there was much closed code, but there was no signed or trusted code. You could still reverse engineer, patch and reflash every single bit of it to your liking, provided you knew what you were doing. On modern hardware, even dumping the decrypted binary for the "trusted execution environment" is a challenge, and getting the thing to run your modified version is simply impossible because it needs to be signed with a key you don't have.