> The hand-wringing post facto justifications, which include Star Wars references to "freedom", are maybe a little tto much, don't you think?

Back in university RMS came to a neighbor uni in Stockholm for a traditional lecture about software freedoms etc. I think everyone thought he was a bit crazy or idealistic (I guess most still do). But the warnings of how you weren't going to own anything, that you have to ask permission, that your devices can be disabled etc, that sounded like fiction at the time. But looking back to that era (2011 or so), it slowly did change for the worse exactly like he warned.

While a lot of the early internet idealisms have fizzled out, I think today those ideas and passions were much more important than we thought. For instance, I usually say that if the web was invented today, browsers would not be approved by the app stores. We take some things for granted, and a lot of those things came from a different era, arising out of preconditions that largely no longer exist.

Email couldn't be invented today.