I'm not suggesting that everyone needs to root their cell phones. There are operational risks in doing so -- such as the possibility of "bricking" your phone (making it nonoperational) if you screw up. Nor does everyone need the ability to run the sorts of applications and systems that require rooting.

That being said, I do consider having the choice of running such software to be an important one, and the concept of devices that lock out user choice is frankly offensive to me.

The conflicting world views represented by various flavors of closed systems -- vs. open systems -- will certainly trigger continuing struggles, not just in the mobile device world, but in technology generally as we move toward ever more complex and "cloud-aware" systems.

But to distill this all down to a simple sound bite, as far as consumers of technology are concerned:

"Open Wins."

-- Lauren Weinsein's blog post Nov 9th, 2010, on cracking the G2 Android phone..