It's time we stopped believing that there's something magic about open source software.
There's no way the average person can build their own software from source [...] forcing your 80 year old grandfather who used to be a chef to audit a few million lines of source code, compile them, and load them onto his phone before he can make a phone call isn't going to help
No. See, those are the real problems... mindset. You all who say this type of talk are disbelieving apologists still trying to advance control, profit, babysitting, trust us we know better, etc... over others. No one is asserting that opensource is currently better or magic. However, when a billion humans around the world *may* look at and even participate in the hw and sw if they wanted to, versus only 25 people locked in the coderoom of a megacorp whose primary raison d etre is by definition making money... the possible odds that it *could* be better and even a solution to everything as you say... are in fact better. Because it's open, not closed. And even if that doesn't happen, then with opensource there are *still* just 25 talented people involved in and hacking on it... openly, not closed. Nor do I see you offering to personally help those grandfathers around you get their phone / cpu up and running when they understand *why* they want to use the open hw and sw, but come asking some human they know who can help the details. Or setting up some local collectives that do so openly for fun.