There are many people who would want the Oculus Quest 2 if it weren't for the controversial requirement of linking to a Facebook account. For those people, Oculus Consulting CTO John Carmack's tweet is very interesting.

As Android Central found, Carmack revealed that Oculus Go (the more basic predecessor to Oculus Quest) will get its own unlocked OS build after official support ends next year.

As Carmack explains, this means that "a randomly discovered shrink-wrapped headset after 20 years can be updated to the final software version even after the over-the-air update servers have been shut down." They can also "reuse the hardware" as much as they want.

That could one day pave the way for a Facebook-free Oculus Quest experience. For now, it is only available to those willing to pay the high price for the enterprise version.

It is important to note that there are many assumptions and moving parts here. In particular, the fact that Carmack's tweet does not mention Facebook at all: the Oculus Go was good, but it was not the blockbuster hit that the Oculus Quest proved to be, and Facebook may be reluctant to offer the same freedom in more commercially successful hardware. It may be reluctant to do so.

Indeed, in his reply, Carmack noted that while he hopes "this will set a precedent for when headsets are no longer supported in the future," it may not be so easy: "It took a lot more work than expected to get all the necessary permissions for this."

And even if this precedent is repeated with Oculus Quest, Quest 2, and (theoretically) Quest 3 and Quest Pro, a more open OS build would not be launched until after official support ends. In other words, by the time this could happen, the hardware would be quite old. Facebook has announced that the Oculus Go will be discontinued in June 2020, with support continuing through 2022. This is a full four years after its release, which means that if the pattern repeats itself, the theoretical openings for Quest and Quest 2 could be after 2023 and 2024, respectively. That is, if it happens.

But of course, for Carmack, this is not about liberating himself from Facebook, but about preserving VR's history in a digital world with cloud-based stores. He tweeted in reply, "I would very much like to see such a world exist where the early days of VR are explored as history."

That at least a company with as many decision makers and bureaucracies as Facebook has signed on to this is a very impressive achievement. Even if this only applies to the Oculus Go, Carmack definitely deserves credit for playing a part in making this happen.