a general-purpose computer -- fine it's easy to replace. We want a completely free BIOS because, well, it might have bugs in it and it's important -- fine I can get an EEPROM flasher. What about CPU microcode? Well, maybe we can fake that. What about defective ICs on the motherboard -- should we only use motherboards which have all of the ICs in sockets so we can replace them with new ones if we find problems with the old ones? What about the implementation of the ICs themselves -- should they all have to be FPGAs so we can re-layout the logic if something in them doesn't work right? How about the silicon? How to you alter that if it's been manufactured correctly? How do you change the electromagnetic constants of the universe? At another point, there's a cost to manufacturing products which are alterable. The socket on a motherboard is a non-zero cost. This is why embedded CPUs are designed to be soldered to the board -- it reduces costs. One aspect of this question that hasn't been mentioned yet is the moral case for *closed* source. We often hear from intellectual property advocates that if somebody created a program, piece of music, document, etc., that they have a "natural right" to it and to control the use of it. They say that it is *theirs*, and that they put a lot of hard work into it, and that nobody else has a right to take it without