Also, saying freedom requires technical knowledge and fiddling is a non sequitur. Technical knowledge and fiddling is possible with freedoms 1 and 3. Without technical knowledge and fiddling you still benefit from freedoms 0 and 2. Thus, software freedom applies to everyone irrespective of skill level.
And how exactly does that take away any of your freedom? You can still disable any or all parts of the verification chain at will, or enroll your own keys. No privilege has been taken away from you.
If you truly cared, you'd advocate for a way to make managing a self-signed trust chain less cumbersome, but you're instead advocating for the user to choose whether to compromise their security entirely. It's a lose-lose situation for a free software platform, ideally the user does not have to choose any compromises.
The tech world is full of mono/oligopolies. You're running an x86 CPU from one of two vendors, using a browser engine either made by Google or paid for by Google, etc. Not depending on any "one company" is as simple as not using a computer at all. Is that a compromise that you'd be ready to suggest?
> Thus, software freedom applies to everyone irrespective of skill level.
Only if your definition of freedom is as narrow as the fundamentalistic "four software freedoms". To someone else, their definition of computing freedom may go more like "I want to play my favourite computer game, but I only have one hour left this evening". At that point, "irrespective of skill level" is an utter lie: most games are significantly more difficult to run on free OS's.
Unless you mean Steam, but isn't that a platform owned by a single company?...
I could roll keys for my own computer, but freedom 3 falls flat on its face when everyone elses private key is kept secret by one company. People unknowingly trust one company for their "security", while in fact the "security" in this entire scheme boils down to securing stock gain. You can hardly blame the consumers for buying computers that come pre-compromised with vendor-specific keys as the change was touted as "more secure". Secure, again, in the sense that it secures even more money in already deep pockets. Those who can't change their OS or can't easily tick a box on a security checklist will stay on the prerolled platform.
Not being dependant on any one party is an effect of having freedom. Not a prerequisite.
And you conflate software freedom with personal freedom. The four freedoms you call narrow and fundamentalistic, apply to software. You argue no privilege is taken away from me, which is correct, but that also applies to the four software freedoms. I choose not to buy games that don't work on the OS I run. That's personal freedom. The software I write is free on its own to end up on anything from a roll of toilet paper to critical mission control systems. I don't care because it's free as in freedom on its own.
