That isn't a dealer vs direct issue. Neither model can protect against shitty vendors not handling warranty they way they are obliged to. Additionally the "competition" from dealerships doesn't help here either as it's not like some other dealer will do your warranty for you when you deal with your shitty point of contact.

That has nothing to do with sales or dealerships. I bought my car direct from the manufacturer, through their website, and yet get it serviced like normal at the local garage down the road.

You what? Is this a thing in the states? It's actually been illegal in Europe to build a fast charger that doesn't except credit / debit cards for 2 years now, and by the end of this year 100% of chargers with a capacity higher than 50kW need to accept credit / debit card.

Additionally low power chargers need to offer an option to pay without an app or subscription, but are allowed to direct you to a payment website (no need to add a hardware credit card reader).

But I for one am in favour of making it as difficult as possible for people to get a nicotine fix. The vape / tabaco industry provides zero benefit to society while having a lot of downsides. It should die in a fire.

I'm in a similar field. RF. We are in a time whereThe RF spectrum is about as clogged as it can get, teetering on the edge of becoming a train wreck. Yet people who know the nuances of keeping signals away from each other are becoming rare.

We had this weird dichotomy of people thinking "Radio is obsolete - if you are technical minded, go for digital technology and science!" while forgetting that a cellular phone is a little walkie-talkie, bluetooth is GHz band transmission, and so on. And we forget that our computers themselves are unintended RF generators. RF is an unruly beast. Its characteristics vary by frequency, time of day, even by weather.

People who understand how to keep this stuff working are not common any more. And we aren't being replaced nearly fast enough. Think of it like the COBOL problem. Old dudes and dudettes naming their price to come back to the banks and keep things running. Except physics based - seemingly arcane. I'm naming my price too, Some folks have told me I should grow my beard long, wear a pointy black hat and gown, and carry a wand. Plunk my magic twanger and the problem is fixed. Because to many, what I do seems like Magic. A good thing I like what I'm doing.

Not all, maybe only 2/3rds. But does that surprise you? Would you invest $1 in a chance to make $10? What would you ask about the investment? What about $1000 for a chance to make $10000? You'd probably want a bit more assurance that you will at least get your $1000 back. How much risk will you take on if we change that number to $100million? I'm guessing you will not part with that money without a "proven track record".

Wait what?

Are you also dating that love does not in fact transcend the fifth dimension and interstellar was also bullshit?

Come on man.

Comparing this to tipping is the wrong approach because tipping is fucking stupid. The problem with your analogy is that the executive are going to a for-profit business that isn't paying its employees properly. That's not the same as using open source software.

Better analogy: It's Monday. You went into the office. Sharleen brought in some cake. Did you tip her for the work she did voluntarily? Why not you monster!

Nothing has been co-opted. Open source hasn't changed, and corporations building their world on open source largely are actively following licenses. The way they were envisaged.

Now speaking of co-opting, what part of Open Source (old ways or current ways) give you any right to gatekeep what happens with the code you publish? If you give something away it literally can't be stolen (leaving aside your conflation of copyright infringement and stealing, shame on you, your UID is low enough that you will have been part of this discussion for 25 years already so you should know better).

What we are talking about literally goes against some of those freedoms. Specifically Freedom 2 and Freedom 3. You can't be free to distribute if a monetary contribution is used for gatekeeping.

Jobs gets all the accolades and fame but he was just a pushy sociopath in a suit,

Suit? The guy who famously wore a black turtleneck all the time?

Anyhoo. I think people outside tech overestimate the importance of CEOs and people in tech underestimate it. Without Jobs, Woz probably would have been a really great engineer in some company and you'd never have heard of him at all. He wasn't a product guy, and you need a product not just raw tech to sell. Selling stuff being somewhat important for a company.

Steve Jobs also had a functioning reality distortion field, something not all that many people have and that's really important for building a company...

Stallman literally developed a license that promoted the allowed use of something making cost primarily optional. Stallman never had issues with charging, but he very much rallied against that charge gatekeeping.

TFS postulates a version of gatekeeping because the voluntary contributions are apparently not sufficient.

LOL. It's great watching conspiracy theorists bitch about systemd, ignoring the many small attempts to replace the init system with something functional and ignoring why it is that distributions adopted a system that is far easier to use.

I'm not sure how you think charging for access would have stopped the likes of Canonical developing Upstart, or Gentoo developing OpenRC, or the development of launchd, or s6, or the many other alternatives.

I'm sorry someone moved your cheese, but that's the beauty of open source. You can do your own thing: https://www.linuxfromscratch.o... Now go get started and do a bit less bitching about someone else's product you are using (I'll bet without you giving any contribution yourself).

You can't think of one? Really? It's early and my coffee hasn't kicked in but let me rattle off the most blatantly obvious:
Availability - More software than every before.
Developer support - More tools, utilities than ever before.
End user impact - Virtually every single person in the world who is using tech has some built on open source.
Audience - Open source is no longer limited to power users.
End use products - There are more devices than ever before available which run open source software, not just built on but also things like computers shipping with Linux.
Corporate adoption - There's more open source running corporations, and by extension more paid for contribution to open source than ever before.

OSS literally has never been stronger.

The question isn't wrong or right, the question is do they belong on this site - one that has it's primary basis in tech and nerds.

What makes your tablet obsolete? The desire to run some latest shininess? I notice you said "obsolete" and not "broken" or "non-functional". Are you concerned you will buy a new fridge every couple of years because you don't like the existing one? That seems to be a you problem.

There's nothing wrong with obsolete hardware. Obsolete just means no longer supported by the vendor. I am under no delusion that I could get complete replacement components for everything in my fridge either, and just like a tablet with an aftermarket battery there's a healthy array of aftermarket parts for things.

Funny you mention that. It would seem like integration with a phone is a pointless optional extra that has nothing to do with driving your car. You're supporting my point while rallying against it at the same time. Also why would you be miserable if your car worked like the day you got it and didn't have an optional new shiny extra? It sounds like you REALLY WANT a fridge with a screen in it. I doubt you'll be happy with a device that just cools based on how you treat your car.

No it's not. Multifunction devices existed long before enshitification. The two concepts are not remotely related.

Your phone's main purpose is to make phone calls. If you own a smartphone I'm going to call you either a hypocrite or an idiot, but I'll give you the curtesy of choosing which label.

Obviously you meant fridge, but then given this is an optional extra that costs money it is clear that someone deemed it a benefit. The fact you don't understand it is not withstanding. Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to grab my tablet and take it down into the kitchen and start cooking dinner. Man if only there was an internet connected screen in the kitchen from which to pull up my recipe...

False equivalence. A leatherman directly trades off primary function against additional functionality. Having a screen on a fridge doesn't affect the fridge in any way what so ever. The compressor is likely the completely identical model to the fridge without a screen.