Now, I’m not asking companies to open-source their entire codebase. That’s unrealistic when an app is tied to a larger platform. What I am asking for: publish a basic GitHub repo with the hardware specs and connection protocols. Let the community build their own apps on top of it.

I agree with this. I think the most important thing is not necessarily the original company releasing their proprietary code (although that would be nice), but it being easy (and legal!) for hackers to reverse engineer and/or build on top of the platform.

The irony is that, since most such products will have some GPL’d code in there somewhere, most products already basically have such a requirement, thanks to the section requiring complete corresponding source including installation instructions. Hopefully, the Vizio case will establish the precedent that users, as well as copyright holders, can take action against such companies.

Wait is this how you get up to date when your system is past long term support?

Pretty much! You just modify the apt sources, and upgrade incrementing by each stable release until you reach current stable. Each upgrade guide has a section that points you to the guide for the previous version if your version doesn’t match.

Would not recommend doing backups drunk.

:D in my experience, there’s a certain amount of drink-inspired overconfidence that can be helpful, but it’s very easy to go over. I need more testing to find the exact line - it might also wrap around again if you drink more. More investigation needed :)

By dumbing down the suite, are you talking about things like flatpak / atomic distros?

If so, I am also not a fan of those things - give me Debian stable and the software in the repos and I’m happy - but I also don’t think I will be harmed by others coming in and trying different approaches. From what I can tell, with each paradigm shift, the old approach doesn’t go away, but stays powered by the volunteers who care about it.