I know it’s an analogy. I just think it was a bad one. The desire for nerds to run unusual software on their phone is not really a life or death situation. I think it’s important to remember that in context, the number of us who care about this issue rounds to about zero. Most people using a phone don’t care.

I also want to run the software of my choosing. But there’s not a single phone you can completely do that with. Some of this is due to design decisions, some of it is due to corporate lock-in, and some of it is due to regulatory requirements.

I wouldn’t be against a law requiring side loading and unlocking, I would be in favor of it. This only addresses part of the software on a phone, though. There’s a lot of software on a phone beyond user space applications.

But I do think it would be reasonable to put some hurdles to make it difficult to do. There are completely valid reasons to protect the average user from being scammed by malicious software.

It sounds like we largely agree, then, so I'm not sure what you were arguing in the first place. That because the companies are legally able to do this and that [hardware-based] jailbreaking is possible in theory, it can't be opposed?

To your other point, firmware is another battle entirely and currently has less practical value.

Yet it happens all the time. More than half of Android phones are infected. So again, a poor argument for security. If anything, by opening it up, we (the collective nerds) could help harden it. Protect it. Improve it.