Beyond that, that nothing on the hardware side stops you from running any software you want to.
Expect the PC to morph into something more akin to a tablet or "smart" TV if the MAFIAA get what they want (and Intel and crew seems all too willing to give in).
And that point your GPC will be relegated to a developer workstation that may well require a verified employer and regular visits from an auditor to own.
You’re getting downvoted, but while what you describe probably isn’t going to happen, you’re not too far off. We’re already “there” with walled garden app stores, and outside of that app signing where you need to pay to be in a “developer program” to be able to sign your apps [1], DRM baked into the browser (EME) and hardware (HDCP), mandatory logins to cloud services for appliances, etc.
[1] (Thinking of macOS here. I’m sure a non-centralized way of signing would also work.)
Yup. Cory Doctorow warned us about it for years (Google keywords: "war on general-purpose computing").
And the sad thing, I'm not sure we can escape that. MAFIAA wants it. Large businesses want it. And to top it off, computer security specialists want it too. Ideas like sandboxing, or trusted computing, or hardware crypto modules - all provide security while simultaneously taking control away from the user.
I seriously fear that soon, having a general-purpose computer connected to the Internet will be considered a public safety issue ("because botnets!"), and eventually you'll need a professional license to be allowed to work with a Turing-complete language ("because langsec!"). I very much don't like it.
Yeah he followed it up with "civil war on GPC", where he basically started to favor "DRM". This with the caveat that it was the owner of the computer that would have control of the keys, and frankly i do not see that happening.
Security people don't tend to ban these things. You can use Linux if you want to. You can sideload Android apps if you want to. But the vast vast vast vast majority of people will never do this and never want to do this. Therefore, we provide an environment that works well for these people takes advantage of that design.
Common things should be easy. Rare things should be possible.
Sadly this is a direction Microsoft is taking with the rumored upcoming "S Mode". If this works for them (and I hope it don’t) even PC will be locked down and no more useful than a tablet. Some decision makers are forgetting hardware is for running software, not blocking everything under the sun.
Expect the PC to morph into something more akin to a tablet or "smart" TV if the MAFIAA get what they want (and Intel and crew seems all too willing to give in).
And that point your GPC will be relegated to a developer workstation that may well require a verified employer and regular visits from an auditor to own.