> I know it can be far better. But it is also just not true, that everything is consistantly getting worse. That's because this is subjective. My measure is, that I shouldn't lose any convenience with progression. If you sold me something, but also took something away, that's "getting worse". I had a simple, working, and repairable machine. I had the confidence that a screwdriver is all I needed to get a repair done. Then you sold me 10 presets, more buttons, and an "eco" mode, but took away my ability to repair it when it breaks. They you took away the warranty that says _you_ will repair it when it breaks. So now I have this magic box I hope doesn't break after 1 year of operation, then I have to buy a new one, or try to find someone who specializes to repair it, without the ability to purchase OEM quality parts (which are junk now too) When my washing machine broke after 10 years of use, I just called the manufacturer (or reseller) and asked to purchase a replacement part that was, relative to the cost of repair or replacement, inexpensive. Now, warranty is 1-2 years, and when they break it's almost impossible to find the modules, connectors, sensors and so on. There's no such thing as a service manual anymore (I was in automotive and even service manuals there are getting harder to acquire). All you needed was curiosity, knowledge of a how to use a flat blade screw driver and how to read. It's an irrefutable fact this is no longer the case, and is being made more difficult by the day. I made a living in automotive firmware reverse engineering for 7 years. I worked on 30 year old trucks. Why TF is that even a profession??? My customers paid me because they wanted to repair or modify their vehicle, but didn't have my engineering degree and dedication. I dedicated almost 10 years of my life because I can't just adjust my distributor, or my carburetor, for better fuel economy. I need to modify locked down software running on a computer to do that.

> t is my decision if I buy ultra high tech phones where everything is soldered together or go for fairphone or framework laptop. In the case of the fairphone, it's not available in the US or with many major carriers (namly mine). I can't speak to a fair phone, they may be all that, but other alternatives, are unfair to say they are even as close in comparison to flagship phones from 5 years ago. We had "good" devices, now we have to give up more than we did (privacy, repair etc), just to get the same thing we had before. As someone who hacked together a non-google "foss everything" android, because I care about it - it's NOT EVEN CLOSE to usable in comparison with Google Android and imo, anyone who disagrees is coping too hard to make a valid argument. If I had anywhere close to a normie life all foss android simply could not work, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who actually prioritized being productive. Same with most arguments of "just use this foss app on github" has never used it to actually get work done, or get somewhere important, or heavily rely on it.

Thank you for your expanded response. I think in most part we fight in the same direction. You and me want to have fully opensource, easy to repair, endurable high end products. My point is mostly, that I am against maximalist claims. I do disagree quiet strongly, with opinions, which use words as "everything", "nothing", "always", "never" and so on for practicle reasons. Since when the claim would be true that it is only getting worse, this includes the message that there is nothing we could do to make it better. Specific cases of particularly good examples or particularly bad examples I see as more practicle, since they give room of opportunity. When there is no room of opportunity, then a discussion is without practical sense. And therefore to me without any sense. So Probably I was disagreeing mostly due to my allergy against these (in my opinion) non-words, since they close any discussion, when they would be true.