This would be a lot more interesting if f.lux was actually distributing source code. Instead, they were just distributing a binary that you sign with your own dev cert.

Side-loading pre-built binaries like that is a huge risk for users and never had a chance of being tolerated by Apple. Such abuse puts the new free-tier Xcode dev program in jeopardy.

The drama! You're describing the Windows application model of the past 30 years.

Seriously, this thread is making Stallman look like a reasonable majority candidate for president. It seems all it took for people to forget what caused PCs to blossom is a little bit of gold coating.

coldtea

>You're describing the Windows application model of the past 30 years.

Considering how many viruses, lost work, malware and hair-tearing that model has induced, it makes sense to go beyond it, doesn't it?

voltagex_

The day I lose the ability to load my own binaries on to devices I own is the day I stop using them.

If you don't have root, you don't really own the device.

derefr

Why do you need to own devices? I'm perfectly happy with Apple being my phone's sysadmin, the way my company's IT department is the sysadmin of my workstation (or, more relevantly, the way Google is the sysadmin for ChromeOS devices.)

Modern devices are basically converging toward being enhanced VT100 terminals connected to some multitenant mainframe somewhere (a.k.a. a "cloud.") Whether that's Apple's cloud, Google's cloud, Microsoft's cloud, Canonical's cloud, etc. You could get the same effect (if a little slower) by just having the device be a dumb framebuffer connected to a VM running in said cloud.

sunnyps

The comparison with ChromeOS is flawed because you can go into Dev mode[1] on ChromeOS and do whatever the heck you want in a linux userland. There's even a project called Crouton[2] that allows you to install traditional Linux apps side-by-side on your Chromebook. You can also build ChromiumOS[3] the open-source version of ChromeOS and make it do whatever the heck you want.

I don't know about you but I want my sysadmin to work for me so that when I tell it to shut up and get out of my way, it does exactly that.

[1] https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/poking-around-your-chro... [2] https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton [3] https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-guide