If the users don't control the program, the program controls the users.

Users' control over the program requires four essential freedoms.

Either way, they give the program's developer power over the users, power that no one should have.

computer users' freedom—for users to control the software they use, rather than vice versa

Programming models, user interfaces, and foundational hardware can, and must, be shallow and composable. We must, as a profession, give agency to the users of the tools we produce. Relying on towering, monolithic structures sprayed with endless coats of paint cannot last. We cannot move or reconfigure them without tearing them down.

The software crisis doesn't just apply to the profession of building software, but to anybody that uses software. Users have little to no control, save for things afforded to them by the author.

please. If I want to open a link in a new window, I'll do it myself!

Software should be a malleable medium, where anyone can edit their tools to better fit their personal needs. The laws of physics aren’t relevant here; all we need is to find ways to architect systems in such a way that they can be tweaked at runtime, and give everyone the tools to do so.

Editorial: The real reason I wanted Cmm to succeed: to democratize programming. It wouldn’t belong in any business plan, and I seldom mentioned to anyone, but the real reason I wanted Cmm to succeed was not about making money (although paying the mortgage was always important). The real reason was because of the feeling I had when I programmed a computer to perform work for me

Roughly stated, my overarching career mission is to design, build, and deploy software platforms that put end users in control of their computing and data, in part by making it easy and natural for programmers to create software that honors user desire.

Free as in ...? Points out that freedoms afforded by foss software to the average computer user are effectively the same as proprietary software, because it's too difficult to even find the source and build it, let alone make any changes. Advocates the foss developers should not think only about the things that users are not legally prevented from doing, but about what things they are realistically empowered and supported in doing.

as if the only option we had to eat was factory-farmed fast food, and we didn’t have any way to make home-cooked meals

Show me a switch statement as if it had been handled with a set of subclasses. There is underlying deep structure here. I should be able to view the code as if it had been done with switch or as if it had been done with polymorphism. Sometimes you are interested in all the facts about Dalmatians. Sometimes you are interested in comparing all the different ways different breeds of dogs bury their bones. Why should you have to pre-decide on a representation that lets you see only one point of view?

the very existence of a master plan means, by definition, that the members of the community can have little impact on the future shape of their community,

except its codebase is completely incomprehensible to anyone except the original maintainer. Or maybe no one can seem to get it to build, not for lack of trying but just due to sheer esotericism. It meets the definition of free software, but how useful is it to the user if it doesn't already do what they want it to, and they have no way to make it do so?

work-around

CSP is taking away too much of the user's power and control over their browser use

Disable features that inhibit control and transparency, and add or modify features that promote them (these changes will almost always require manual activation or enabling).

In addition, Google designed Chromium to be easy and intuitive for users, which means they compromise on transparency and control of internal operations.

Second, I don't agree that there are too many small modules. In fact, I wish every common function existed as its own module. Even the maintainers of utility libraries like Underscore and Lodash have realized the benefits of modularity and allowed you to install individual utilities from their library as separate modules. From where I sit that seems like a smart move. Why should I import the entirety of Underscore just to use one function? Instead I'd rather see more "function suites" where a bunch of utilities are all published separately but under a namespace or some kind of common name prefix to make them easier to find. The way Underscore and Lodash have approached this issue is perfect. It gives consumers of their packages options and flexibility while still letting people like Dave import the whole entire library if that's what they really want to do.

Just coming here to voice my agreement that these warnings are annoying and exist in other libraries as well. For me this happened with svelma. I didn't write the library code, so I don't have complete control over it even though I agree there is an argument to be had around whether I should be notified anyway. In either case, these warnings should be easily disabled since libraries don't always get updated over night.

Maybe it's also a bug because every warning should be ignorable? Not sure.

I would like the compiler to add a property like canIgnore: false to the warning, if the warning cannot be disabled.

For now, the Solid technology is still new and not ready for the masses. But the vision, if it works, could radically change the existing power dynamics of the Web. The system aims to give users a platform by which they can control access to the data and content they generate on the Web. This way, users can choose how that data gets used rather than, say, Facebook and Google doing with it as they please. Solid’s code and technology is open to all—anyone with access to the Internet can come into its chat room and start coding.