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Originally Posted by ohIdon'tknow
At present you can mess about with Kobo and Pocketbooks. But isn't Kobo introducing secure boot across its range? Which could seriously hamper 3rd party development. Who's to say Pocketbook won't go the same way. And could you do anything to stop them? I just think maybe it'd a good idea to have an open e-reader OS than can't be locked down at the whim of some CEO or other.
And Kobo isn't entirely 100% open-source, is it? It does have some proprietary elements like DRM and wotnots. I know that for the clever cloggs there are ways to bypass DRM and the Kobo ecosystem, but that's not really the point. It will still affect the wider society. Maybe a PineNote (and other e-ink tablets) with Calibre OS won't make much of a dent in the enshittification of society, but it's likely better than relying upon the kindness of strangers in some distant boardroom.
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Well, yes, I mostly agree with these points. DRM, of course, is there because publishers demand it, not because Kobo wants to make it impossible for you to access your purchased books. Kobo sells plenty of DRM-free ebooks as well.
And yeah, all this could change one day and probably will. Not necessarily for the better, of course.
Still, for just book reading, PineNote is an overkill and far too expensive. What most Kindle/Kobo/Pocketbook users would want is a dedicated ereader with reasonable specs and hardware, which is priced as an ereader, not as a tablet. I don't think such a device exists at the moment.