Comment by globular-toast

Stallman was right and that only becomes more clear to me with each day that passes. But there is a big difference between having the legal/technical ability to do something and that being at all practical. I'm becoming increasingly more concerned about the practical aspect rather than the technical.

Take the issue of freedom of speech. While it may be legally protected to various degrees, with the US having one of the strongest protections, is it practical when all communication happens on private platforms with opaque filtering ("moderation")?

I see the same thing in programming freedom. Android might technically be "open source" but it is no more practical to actually hack the software on your Android phone than an Apple phone. Similarly, PCs might be available that are under the complete control of the owners, but you need to be an expert programmer to realise this control.

Lisp is simply a more practical language to begin hacking. Emacs is probably the best example. Everything is there to make it easier to hack. It's not just technically free, it's practically free too.