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Inducing others into the trapInducing others into the trapPosted Mar 2, 2010 8:18 UTC (Tue) by Janne (guest, #40891)In reply to: Inducing others into the trap by lxoliva Parent article: Linux-2.6.33-libre released
"But when you tell your neighbor to use the same software you use, it might
very well be that your neighbor would find herself deprived of control over her different computer, because of the very software that you dismissed as inoperant."
And then again, the neighbour might find out that his computer does not
Fact is that to most people, computers are tools and appliances. they don't
So what if I run Linux with some firmware-blobs? How does it harm me? I'm
"Besides, if the software is useless for you, harmful for your neighbor,
Because without that code, that piece of hardware is just an expensive
Like I said, the proper way to handle cases like this is to simply not use
"Why give anyone the impression that it, and the hardware that only works
I have used Linux with proprietary drivers, and I did not think that
But lets assume that I had "given away my freedom". What freedom would that
The problem is that people look at these issues from a programmers
I know how I would have been worse off by not using those drivers: no 3D-
(Log in to post comments)
Inducing others into the trap Posted Mar 2, 2010 13:56 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
... and if you download an upstream 2.6.33 kernel and try to compile it, you find that interrupts don't work on Radeon, because the firmware for it isn't in the tree. You can hunt it down in another tree (linux-firmware) and point the kernel at it, but the only info I've found about this is *in the git commit message adding the dependency*, and even that doesn't mention that the newly-required firmware was never added to the kernel tree at all, even in the firmware/ subdirectory.
... but maybe I missed the prominent message at release time... or maybe it's a simple mistake.
Inducing others into the trap Posted Mar 2, 2010 18:45 UTC (Tue) by khc (subscriber, #45209) [Link]
do you have the link to the commit handy? Does it affect all radeons?
Inducing others into the trap Posted Mar 3, 2010 12:30 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
r6xx, r7xx, those being the only ones that gained interrupt support this
time around and need firmware for it.
Commit d8f60cfc93452d0554f6a701aa8e3236cbee4636, which introduces
Oh yes, you can let the firmware loader get udev to load it off the
Radeon KMS: lovely results, and a setup user experience like pushing forks
Inducing others into the trap Posted Mar 2, 2010 19:06 UTC (Tue) by lxoliva (subscriber, #40702) [Link]
You'll notice that not using that hardware and voting with the wallets is precisely something that the text suggests.
Making the non-Free firmware built-in, trivial to run, is precisely what prevents people from becoming aware of the problem, so as to take this sort of action.
Now, don't you think it's a bit too self-centered that, because you don't see how valuable the help s that you could get from a community to improve the software you can't improve because you don't know how to program, and don't care enough to learn (which is fine), you and everyone else must be deprived of this freedom?
I don't know about you, but I have been victimized by bugs in software+hardware combinations that could have been fixed with small software changes, but that the vendor refused to make and refuse to let me make. Stuff ranging from video resolution tables in Video BIOS, enabling/disabling backlights of LCD panels, bugs in implementations of WiFi encryption in routers, bugs in ACPI tables that required such essential features as USB keyboards and disks to be disabled, bugs in interrupt routing tables that broke wired network interfaces, caused random reboots and freezes, and the list goes on and on. A few of them could be worked around, others made the machines so useless that I demanded them to be fixed (still under warranty) and, since the manufacturer refused, I ended up having to return them after much struggling with the vendor.
Now, if you think anyone is doing me a favor for letting me use the hardware I paid for the way I see fit, refusing to fix obvious defects and refusing to let me fix them, maybe you'd also see as a favor say a watch that couldn't have its time adjusted by you, and that had to be taken to a repair shop to be adjusted, and after a year or two repair shops would no longer fix it because the manufacturer won't let them any more, so that you buy newer models.
I don't want to live in a world in which this stuff would be ok, but it's the very kind of stuff that we'll get by progressively giving up control over our devices to those who can and will profit as much as they can from this control.
Open your eyes, Janne, the devices you're sold as black boxes could be *so* much more useful to you if you could just improve one tiny bit here and there, rework one or another detail, add a feature or two, with help from people who won't have an interest in not helping so as to induce you to buy their next improved model.
Would you buy a house whose inside you can't paint with the colors you see fit? That you can't move some walls and doors so as to better fit your needs, that you can't as much as hang pictures off those walls, because someone else prohibits you from doing that? You might rent it and accept the conditions, but if you bought a house under such restrictions, would you really think of it as yours?
I guess the reason you can't see the benefits of freedom is because of the blinds you let them put on you. You can see a number of the benefits when it comes to the main operating system on your computer, why would the operating systems on gadgets and peripherals be any different? Take them blinds out, open your eyes, and Free your mind!
Inducing others into the trap Posted Mar 2, 2010 20:40 UTC (Tue) by foom (subscriber, #14868) [Link]
> Making the non-Free firmware built-in, trivial to run, is precisely what prevents people from
> becoming aware of the problem.
Exactly so. Where's the version of linux that excludes drivers for all hardware that includes on-
Some people get all worked up about the firmware that is uploaded to the device, but conveniently
But the hardware with non-free firmware in ROM or Flash -- who knows if you can even replace
Inducing others into the trap Posted Mar 4, 2010 16:23 UTC (Thu) by jzbiciak (✭ supporter ✭, #5246) [Link] But the hardware with non-free firmware in ROM or Flash -- who knows if you can even replace that at all! Might as well toss that hardware out, you'll probably never get free firmware for it! So you surely don't need to include any support whatsoever for *that*. Good luck getting the firmware for your computer monitor, your mouse, your keyboard, your PSU, your UPS, your KVM, your television, your television remote controls, your telephone, your refrigerator, your washing machine, your toaster, your coffee maker.... So much harmful firmware everywhere! Or maybe not. My monitor has poorly translated menus (what does "Input Not Support" mean?) and a quirky interface, but it gets the job done. My mouse works. My keyboard works. My KVM has some quirks (doesn't work with one of my mice, and doesn't cache EDID information for my monitor) but also works well enough to be useful and worth what I paid. I suppose I could try to get firmware source for all of this. I could even set about fixing the few quirks. But, realistically, I won't and it's unlikely anyone else will either. I guess the flip-side arises with safety critical firmware, such as what's behind all the Toyota sudden acceleration fiasco. But, I don't know that you really want to let anyone with a basic knowledge of assembly code actually tinkering with that. Broader review though would potentially be helpful. In the end, though, there's another freedom that we shouldn't forget: The freedom to not sweat the small stuff. If my analog phone gets replaced with a digital phone that does substantially the same thing with similar reliability, do I lose freedom if I don't get the source code with the phone for the firmware that handles "redial" and such? In a very technical sense, I suppose so. But, if the phone comes to me as an appliance that does what it's advertised to do, no more, no less, I gain the freedom of not caring about what else it might be capable of doing. And if it doesn't work as advertised, I can fall back on the implied warranty of merchantability/fitness for a particular purpose. Now, sure, we should all have freedom to tinker, but that doesn't mean JTAG headers should start popping up everywhere. It just means I shouldn't get sued if I break the warranty-voiding stickers on an otherwise black box. Indifference is not hostility. (Laws like the DMCA are actively hostile in this space. Most of the time, though, manufacturers simply don't care.) Some things will be more tinker-friendly than others, and tinkerers can vote with their dollars. The sad reality is that there isn't a lot of money in catering to tinkerers in mass-market devices.
Inducing others into the trap Posted Mar 6, 2010 14:41 UTC (Sat) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]
> there's another freedom that we shouldn't forget: The freedom to not
sweat the small stuff
Great quote! I remember the days of scouring Fry's entire inventory
If this project was more Harald Welte style, where one would contact
However, simply removing firmware blobs from your own kernel is unlikely to
If you're simply trying to get that nice clean FLOSS feeling, you can get
Thanks for volunteering Posted Mar 6, 2010 18:26 UTC (Sat) by lxoliva (subscriber, #40702) [Link]
Your efforts in contacting companies and getting them to release the firmware source code, and then developing the Free replacements, are definitely something that would fit in nicely in the project.
Meanwhile, while you're too busy criticizing what you don't understand (your failure to see the upside is enough evidence that you don't), we will keep it making it easy for people to tell whether they made a good hardware choice, so as to encourage more people to do so, so that the companies feel the pressure and make the decision to release the firmware in spite of your not doing your part to that end. Still don't the upside?
Thanks for volunteering Posted Mar 6, 2010 18:34 UTC (Sat) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
I believe that bronson has a good point that this effort needs to concentrate
on getting firmware replacements in place to not regress on the user experience and make the hardware usable for users who have already bought them
Freedom is good but freedom with a awesome user experience is better and
Thanks for volunteering Posted Mar 6, 2010 19:28 UTC (Sat) by lxoliva (subscriber, #40702) [Link]
Bronson has a good point that the efforts of reaching for vendors and trying to get them to release their firmware as Free Software is useful. But that would be no help in ridding Linux of the pollutants it has now. Even if the vendors released the bits, someone would have to clean things up. So, no, I don't see that this effort we make needs to concentrate on something else. It's two separate, independent valuable efforts.
As for user who have already bought stuff, giving them easy access to the stuff they're addicted to will just keep them addicted, perpetuating the problem of making decisions that are harmful to themselves and to everyone around them.
You might call the shining colors they see while under influence of those substances an awesome user experience; I call that hallucination, and I don't think it's any good.
But I don't think you regard the hallucinations as an awesome user experience, because you also appreciate the efforts that went into setting nouveau completely Free, so that now the experience can be really awesome.
Thanks for volunteering Posted Mar 6, 2010 19:36 UTC (Sat) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
I see the efforts as definitely complimentary and freeing the firmware to
make the hardware more useful is no addiction and is a step up towards preserving freedom and providing the practical benefits at the same time and yes you might need to do some clean up work but that is no different from any code being released
Thanks for volunteering Posted Mar 6, 2010 19:47 UTC (Sat) by lxoliva (subscriber, #40702) [Link]
Your response gives me the impression that we've miscommunicated.
It would be very odd to say that freeing up the firmware is an addiction, as you seem to have understood from what I wrote. Quite the opposite. Freeing up the firmware is a great thing, for it makes the device usable in freedom, regardless of whether it's the vendor that liberates it or some reverse engineer who writes a replacement and sets it Free.
The addictive and harmful stuff that I alluded to was the non-Free software (not just firmware) that so many distros insist in giving users easy access to, using arguments that come across as oxymoronic to me: that this would improve the user experience. Keeping users fooled, controlled, spied, dependent, divided and hopeless is not awesome, it's awful. Getting the impression that offering these addictive substances to users will solve any technical or social problem is IMHO yet another hallucination induced by these substances.
Thanks for volunteering Posted Mar 6, 2010 20:10 UTC (Sat) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
I wasn't talking about distros at all and that is a distraction from the
point I was making which is that while freedom is a good value it is a bit more abstract for a lot of users and you should try your best to provide a good user experience and consider participating in efforts to write free firmware replacements such as the OpenFWWF one for Broadcom
When Fedora includes the firmware by default a lot of users were pleasantly
To give another example we had for several years talked about how
What's the goal? Posted Mar 6, 2010 20:59 UTC (Sat) by lxoliva (subscriber, #40702) [Link]
Sustainable distribution of non-Free Software (no matter how much Free Software is put in the mix) doesn't seem like a goal I share, or something I'd like to be involved in :-(
Now, if you meant that feeding people's addictions to non-Free Software will somehow pave the way for software freedom for all, and get everyone to, some day, stop using all the non-Free Software they became dependent on (it doesn't have to be the same day for everyone, mind you), I'm very interested in reading your thoughts on how to accomplish that. Thanks in advance,
BTW, 3D doesn't work on ATI cards on systems with only Free Software installed. In fact, without the non-Free firmware, loading up the radeon driver messes up the whole system, as I have experienced first-hand, and that others confirmed in this discussion.
What's the goal? Posted Mar 6, 2010 21:18 UTC (Sat) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
To repeat I was referring to distribution of free and open source drivers
as the more sustainable path and who said anything about sustainable distribution of non-free software? You seem to be reading things which I have never said and doing it repeatedly for some reason and asking me to justify things I have never said is pointless and annoying
Progress often happens in stages and again Nouveau is a good example of
What's the goal? Posted Mar 6, 2010 22:00 UTC (Sat) by lxoliva (subscriber, #40702) [Link]
You wrote of distributing the software for wireless cards and ATI video cards to work out of the box, but those are unfortunately not Free Software. You wrote including this non-Free Software (and also some Free Software) convinced users this was a more sustainable path in the longer term.
Sustainable means it's something one can keep on doing indefinitely. Whether or not distributing mixtures of non-Free and Free Software is suitainable is not relevant to the goals of liberating the cyberspace, eliminating non-Free Software and enabling all users to be Free. Why would we want or even care that this is sustainable?
Progress is welcome, and nouveau is indeed a great example, which is why it is cited in the article. (BTW, thanks for letting me know about advances that were quite unexpected to me!)
Hut firmware for ATI video cards and many WiFi cards are counter examples to the progress. Instead of motivating people to write replacements, they accommodate people in their addiction, and induces others to enter the progressive addiction path.
Your writing seems to given equal value to the just-Freed nouveau and the proprietary software that controls ATI video cards and many WiFi cards, to the point of saying we needed to provide users with more of the latter. I strongly object to that notion. If you didn't mean to suggest that, I'm very interested in knowing what it is that you're actually suggesting.
(reads again)
Here's another possibility of reading what you wrote that, although requiring some corrections and assumptions, indicates I've misunderstood much of what you wrote:
When you wrote of wireless cards and happily-surprised users, you were only referring to b43 cards on which openfwwf worked, not to wireless cards in general. Now, I don't know whether Fedora shipped the non-Free firmware for b43. If it did, as I assumed because it ships non-Free firmware for lots of WiFi cards, users wouldn't be surprised with the inclusion of openfwwf, but they would have been surprised years ago when Fedora started adding non-Free firmware.
When you wrote of 3D on ATI video, you made a mistake, because 3D doesn't work on ATI video cards unless the non-Free firmware is loaded. Even nouveau, as currently provided in all Fedora releases that have ever included nouveau, still requires has non-Free blobs built into it. The exception is the last two or three builds in the development tree for F-13, that has 2.6.33 patched with the post-2.6.33 fixes that finally made 3D on nVidia cards functional without non-Free Software.
So, if you were speaking only of openfwwf and the just-Freed nouveau as examples of stuff we need more of, and the reference to ATI was a mistake, we're in full agreement. But if it was something else, can you please clarify? TIA,
What's the goal? Posted Mar 6, 2010 23:02 UTC (Sat) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
Your second reading is closer to my position than your first reading which
has a lot of misunderstandings in it but you haven't got everything I said correctly
Nouveau is a example where progress happened in different stages
a) A few people participated in writing a completely free driver
I am suggesting that the Radeon driver can progress this way as well and
"Now, I don't know whether Fedora shipped the non-Free firmware for b43. If
Your assumption here is wrong because the non-free firmware for b43 is not
If Fedora included the non-free b43 firmware somehow then Free replacement
I am suggesting that freedom can lead to a better user experience which is
What's the goal? Posted Mar 6, 2010 21:50 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
Without the non-free firmware the card works fine, if unaccelerated. And I
far prefer a small amount of non-free firmware and a large body of free software to the memory-leaking slow dysfunctional closed unfixable horror that was fglrx...
I'm not going to chastise ATI/AMD for going from adamant hostility to free
What's the goal? Posted Mar 6, 2010 22:09 UTC (Sat) by lxoliva (subscriber, #40702) [Link]
Their change in stance was welcome. They didn't have to rewrite the blobs, though. They could just set them Free, or release enough info so that others can rewrite them. Surely they have either if not both.
My old ATI card works fine only if I blacklist the radeon driver. I had it completely disabled for a long time (it didn't work after replacing the blobs disguised as sources with empty arrays), and when the blobs were moved out of the tree, I tried again, but then I ran into the interrupt storm, figured it still wouldn't work and moved on.
What's the goal? Posted Mar 6, 2010 23:50 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
Personally, I'm glad they chose to release info and get working on the
code as soon as they could, rather than waiting for God knows how long for the lawyers to clear *everything* before starting any work at all. The wait for docs was years long as it was.
The interrupt storm, well, IRQ support is very new and IRQs are only
Inducing others into the trap Posted Mar 3, 2010 6:58 UTC (Wed) by Janne (guest, #40891) [Link]
"I don't know about you, but I have been victimized by bugs in software+hardware combinations
that could have been fixed with small software changes"
If you are a programmer, sure. But I'm no programmer.
"Now, if you think anyone is doing me a favor for letting me use the hardware I paid for the way
Why would you buy a piece of hardware from a company that treats you like dirt?
"Open your eyes, Janne, the devices you're sold as black boxes could be *so* much more useful
You still haven't answered the simple question I asked: How does Regular Linux limit my
Like I said: the problem is that FSF looks at this from a programmers perspective. But most
"Would you buy a house whose inside you can't paint with the colors you see fit?"
Flawed argument. I know how to paint walls, I don't know how to hack C, so removing the ability
Isn't it one freedom to choose using hardware that needs proprietary bits? Aren't we free to
"I guess the reason you can't see the benefits of freedom is because of the blinds you let them
Of course I can see the benefits of freedom. But the thing is that all these things are by
I'm not saying that GPL is bad, or free software is bad (far from it). What I AM saying is that this
"Take them blinds out, open your eyes, and Free your mind!"
And I can do that by using hardware that has free drivers available. What exactly am I missing
Freedom matters to everyonel, directly or indirectly Posted Mar 3, 2010 10:36 UTC (Wed) by lxoliva (subscriber, #40702) [Link]
Unfortunately, the answer is not as simple as the question. Or, rather, it is simple, but it's a bit long. Please bear with me.
You know what? I know nothing about painting, and I'm sure I'd suck at it if I tried. I still want the freedom to paint the walls of my house with whatever colors and paint I choose, and I'm sure I'll be able to find a competent painter to paint it for me whenever I fancy. Wouldn't it suck to buy the house and then find out that, if you want it painted, you have to hire the very person who sold you the house to do that job? That's what you get with non-Free Software, be it an application, an operating system or firmware for some piece of hardware.
Now consider this: do you agree that freedom of the press is important? Most people do. But how many of them write on newspapers, or otherwise work in the press, actively exercising that freedom? You don't have to be a journalist and exercise the freedom yourself in order to benefit from the freedom of the press. You can *choose* to exercise this freedom, if it's there, but even if you don't, the fact that many others do makes things better for you. But if it isn't, everyone loses. Consider how silly our current debate would be, if taking place between a proponent of freedom of the press and a non-journalist who doesn't perceive the indirect value that this freedom affords her.
On to software. Even if you never even realize that an improvement to a piece of software could make your computer (think cell phone, portable media player, media recorder, watch, notebook, desktop, whatever) work better for you, odds are that others will, and if they have the freedom to do it and share it with others, odds are that the benefits will percolate to you as well. And, if you *do* realize an improvement that would help you, you have the freedom to learn how to program, or to lure a programmer to do the job for you (hiring, asking kindly, whatever).
So, you see, the I'm not a programmer argument is fatally flawed, it misses the forest and the ecosystem focusing on a single tree. What's more, it seems to be some kind of a mantra that the industry of control spreads unto people, making them believe that it knows better than ourselves what's best for us, promoting such myths as I need to hide this from you to protect you (security by obscurity) and you're not smart enough to do this job, close your eyes and trust me. Don't be a fool, don't believe these myths!
Why would you buy a piece of hardware from a company that treats you like dirt?
Exactly!
How does Regular Linux limit my freedoms, whereas Linux-libre does not?
Besides the point that you identified yourself, it promotes and endorses the horrible idea that it's normal and acceptable to give up control over certain parts of your computer, it gets people used to that. As the amazing and terrifying growth of the blobs required by Linux shows, this is a dangerous slippery slope. If we don't revert this trend, Linux and other low-level pieces of software will be increasingly kept as closely guarded secrets, and we'll be back to the point in which RMS and everyone else were 25 years ago: nearly all the software around them had turned proprietary. And this is happening again.
And, worse, it's not only happening in some small bits and pieces of Linux. Freedom is evaporating into the cloud. More and more phones (the most common computing platform nowadays) are using GNU/Linux or Android or BSD, but non-Free versions thereof. Non-Free through withholding of source code (iPhone's BSD-based system) or Tivoization of Linux and Symbian.
Now, of course these businesses want to keep people ignorant and incapable of perceiving the value of freedom: such people are much easier to control and lure with ooh, shiny traps and tricks, and they *will* buy pieces of hardware from companies that treat them like dirt, because they don't see there is an alternative, they don't see they can take part in shaping the alternative, they aren't willing to make a tiny little bit of sacrifice to shape it, but they are willing to fight *for* those who keep them hostages (did I mention Stockholm's Syndrome?), and they will sacrifice freedom for short-term convenience (echoes of Ben Franklin come to mind), convenience that will be lost as soon as those whom they gave up their freedom find it profitable to also take it away. Then you're left with what? Freedom to give up your freedom, to choose your master? That's no freedom! When you get to that point, you're already under control, your freedom is already lost.
See how Linux's stance of accepting, promoting and endorsing the slippery slope affects your freedom? Keep in mind is that promoting the software is not the same as promoting the freedom: when the promotion of the software involves software that takes the freedom away, the message of freedom is fundamentally lost.
See how Linux-libre helps you, your gradma and everyone else, by exposing the problem, helping people realize they're losing their freedom, and inviting people to vote with their wallets for hardware manufacturers to respect their customers? Even if you don't choose to run it on your current computer, it might help you choose a computer that respects you next time you go shopping, so that you can vote right with your wallet. And then, since you can, we can hope you will, and so will many others, and then we'll get the change we need, rather than change they can spare ;-)
(Was it just me that read change we need as something a bunch of street beggars might say, and that could be answered to their satisfaction with handful of coins? :-)
Freedom matters to everyonel, directly or indirectly Posted Mar 3, 2010 13:55 UTC (Wed) by Janne (guest, #40891) [Link]
You are still not making any sense.
You are making the claim that "freedom is important". And you are right, it is important. But this project does not promote freedom. I mean, those binary blobs are still out there. Simply removing them from the kernel does not suddenly enable developers to hack away at that code. It's still closed. Only thing this project does, is to give us a kernel that is not as functional as the vanilla-kernel. It does not in any shape or form increase the users or developers freedom.
Yes, freedom is important. But freedom that people are unable to take advantage of is next to useless. I might have the freedom to move to Mars. But since I'm unable to do so, that freedom is meaningless to me.
Free software is very important to coders, and that in return gives the users better software as well. But like I said, this project does not help coders write better software, since code that was previously closed is not being made free.
"On to software. Even if you never even realize that an improvement to a piece of software could make your computer (think cell phone, portable media player, media recorder, watch, notebook, desktop, whatever) work better for you, odds are that others will, and if they have the freedom to do it and share it with others, odds are that the benefits will percolate to you as well."
Great! And how does this project enable that? Answer: it doesn't. That unhackable code is still unhackable code. Simply removing it from the kernel accomplishes nothing.
"So, you see, the I'm not a programmer argument is fatally flawed"
It isn't. Most people are not programmers. And second, this project does nothing to help programmers write better code.
"Besides the point that you identified yourself, it promotes and endorses the horrible idea that it's normal and acceptable to give up control over certain parts of your computer, it gets people used to that."
And this is why Linux on the desktop has failed. Fact is that people want a computer that works. If you asked them if they would prefer a computer that ran 100% free software but had lots of features that did not work, as opposed to having a fully functional computer that ran proprietary software, they would pick the latter. That is a fact. Most people simply do not care about the freedom of the software, they just want software that WORKS. Most people are in no position to take advantage of that freedom, and they rightly do not care. Why should they concern themselves with things that they have no use of?
And what's more important is that we have the opportunity to give users a computer and software that is 99% free software, and it would be fully functional. But that is not acceptable to FSF-hardliners, who would rather have 100% free software but less functionality. End result is that people use Windows or MacOS instead. Instead of running 99% free software, they end up running 99% proprietary software. How does that benefit Free Software?
"See how Linux-libre helps you, your gradma and everyone else, by exposing the problem, helping people realize they're losing their freedom, and inviting people to vote with their wallets for hardware manufacturers to respect their customers?"
Most people have not lost anything. And those who have lost (programmers) do not benefit from this project at all, since the code that was unhackable is still unhackable.
Linux-libre does not help my grandma at all. All it would cause it for her to call me and ask "why doesn't my webcam work?". I could tell her all about free software and how she's better off when proprietary software is removed from her computer. At that point she would ask me "so you are saying that my webcam will not work in Linux? Could you come over and install Windows instead? It worked there just fine". The benefits free software gives are of no use to her, she doesn't care about them.
And I admit: my main computer is a Mac, and I have an iPod. Why? Because I felt they were superior to their alternatives. By using a Mac I'm supposedly "giving up my freedoms". But I honestly don't see that. Only thing I see is that I finally have a computer with an UI that is easy, powerful and good-looking. I finally have a computer that requires no hand-holding from me and where everything just works. Am I being stupid for choosing practicality over ideology? I mean, the closedness of the Mac has not harmed me in any shape or form. Only thing I have seen is that I get more enjoyment from my computer and my productivity went up. Is it stupid of me to choose those immediate and tangible benefits over benefits that give me n benefit at all?
I bet you are now about to make some comparison about painting houses or something. But again: I'm no programmer, so freedom of Linux or closedness of MacOS does not harm me.
Freedom matters to everyonel, directly or indirectly Posted Mar 3, 2010 16:36 UTC (Wed) by Zack (guest, #37335) [Link]
>And I admit: my main computer is a Mac, and I have an iPod.
>I honestly don't see that. Only thing I see is that I finally have a computer with an UI that is easy, powerful and good-looking.
Please don't understand this the wrong way, but putting these "disclaimers" somewhere near the top of your earlier posts would have saved (at least me) some time.
Freedom matters to everyonel, directly or indirectly Posted Mar 3, 2010 17:01 UTC (Wed) by Janne (guest, #40891) [Link]
"This is not to indicate you are wrong or right in your opinion; it's just that your perspective is probably so different from mine that it's nearly impossible to formulate something sensible enough to contribute to the thought process of the other side."
So, because I use a Mac, my thinking is somehow "tainted"? Fact is that I use both Linux and Mac. My main computer is a Mac, but I'm typing this message on my second laptop that runs Ubuntu.
Maybe what we need is exactly what you reject: different thinking. Should only hardcore Linux-users be allowed to comment on these kinds of things? Could you get a worthwhile discussion, if every participant has 95% identical opinions and thoughts on the subject-matter? Preaching to the choir doesn't really achieve anything.
I admit: I'm quite pragmatic when it comes to computers. I look for software and hardware that gives me maximum amount of satisfaction and use. It just happens that for me, Mac is it. But that does not mean that I have to "hate" Linux (I don't, I'm a card-carrying member of local LUG) or think free software as "stupid" (I don't think it's stupid, far far from it).
Mac is my primary machine, but I use and enjoy Linux as well. Linux gives me different kinds of benefits, and I enjoy testing new things. And I started using Linux in -98 or so, so I have quite a long experience with it.
Freedom matters to everyonel, directly or indirectly Posted Mar 3, 2010 17:24 UTC (Wed) by Zack (guest, #37335) [Link]
>So, because I use a Mac, my thinking is somehow "tainted"?
No, it's because you write "I honestly don't see that"; if you are indeed honest about that, and I have no reason to doubt that, it is an explanation to me why you write things like
>Maybe what we need is exactly what you reject: different thinking.
Yeah, I know, "think different".
Freedom matters to everyonel, directly or indirectly Posted Mar 4, 2010 20:30 UTC (Thu) by papik (guest, #15175) [Link]
> Mac is my primary machine, but I use and enjoy Linux as well. Linux
> gives me different kinds of benefits, and I enjoy testing new things.
Maybe if Mac was free, you wouldn't need Linux to enjoy those different
It seems to me that you are looking at present (as "now I can do X and Y,
(It seems to me that the lines following lines ending with '-' are being
Freedom matters to everyonel, directly or indirectly Posted Mar 3, 2010 17:28 UTC (Wed) by viro (subscriber, #7872) [Link]
*snort* How about some non-faith-based arguments? There are damn good rational ones for "why source for firmware is generally a desirable thing"; none that I can see for that publicity stunt, but hey, maybe you guys can produce some...
If some luser duhveloper says "this code must work, because my ideology says it must and if you don't share my beliefs, there's nothing I can do, we are just culturally incompatible", the silly bugger will get a rapid and painful course of education in the reasons why solipsism derivatives are BS, why his beliefs don't mean a damn thing for reality and why his faith is not strong enough to avert the well-earned, er, uncomfortable sensations. Why should the same kind of crap be treated any kinder in this case?
Ideology is basically a set of heuristics. The output may be deemed more or less satisfactory by *external* criteria; without those all you've got is a dogmatic religion.
If you have rational and ideology-independent arguments for the tree "freed" in that manner, make those. If not, there's really nothing to talk about.
Freedom matters to everyonel, directly or indirectly Posted Mar 3, 2010 17:59 UTC (Wed) by Zack (guest, #37335) [Link]
If it's any comfort, I don't understand most of your post either.
You seem to draw parallels between removing firmware blobs from the linux kernel and faith/ideology. I don't see the correspondence between those, since I'm not really a religious person, so it's difficult for me to correlate them in a meaningful way.
Fortunately you also write
>There are damn good rational [reasons] for "why source for firmware is generally a desirable thing"
If you could present those, that could be very useful.
Freedom matters to everyonel, directly or indirectly Posted Mar 3, 2010 18:58 UTC (Wed) by viro (subscriber, #7872) [Link]
Read what lxo has written and tell me if his reasoning survives if you remove ideology. As for the rational reasons for firmware source being generally benefitial, they are obvious and mentioned in this thread. Starting with potentially improved odds of figuring out why given piece of hardware sucks in given way by whoever ends up having to debug the breakage caused by FPOS in question. Balanced by the risks of nausea from reading it, of course, but that's a separate story.
But the same odds are also improved by
IOW, "P may make dealing with Y less painful" doesn't mean "P should be a prereq for doing anything with Y".
Freedom matters to everyonel, directly or indirectly Posted Mar 3, 2010 21:12 UTC (Wed) by Zack (guest, #37335) [Link]
Thank you.
If I understand your examples correctly, handling firmware can be a very painful experience, nausea inducing even.
But *if* I understood them correctly, I'm not clear on your objections against the linux-libre kernel.
If someone were to say that shipping (a part of) such a vendor's product and mentioning their products name was a subset of the term "endorsement", I would not find that unreasonable.
Now if that someone would say, "I do not want to endorse any vendor that would inflict such a painful experience on those kernel-hackers, even though I myself am not a kernel hacker and my kernel might be less functional.
Where could such a user go and download a kernel that he could use in the secure knowledge that he would not be unwittingly causing problems for kernel-hackers ?
Regardless of the exact background leading to the creation of linux-libre, the end result addresses the above question nicely; now such users can go and use the linux-libre kernel.
Now "not wanting to harm anyone though inaction" might have ideological connotations, but in my opinion is more of a simple act of solidarity than any sort of strict ideology.
Freedom matters to everyonel, directly or indirectly Posted Mar 4, 2010 15:17 UTC (Thu) by mrshiny (subscriber, #4266) [Link]
I concur that this libre tree is more of a political statement than anything else. In that sense I support it; people can make whatever political statements they want and this statement says "Only fully supported hardware is welcome".
I disagree with the underlying philosophy, though, because Free drivers make the hardware less relevant to Freedom and a Free kernel makes the drivers less relevant and a Free desktop environment makes the OS less relevant, etc, up the chain of abstraction. Yes, if there is no Free OS then you are limited, but the mere existence of a Free OS means that you can preserve some of your potential Freedom even if you are running Firefox on Windows. If Windows hurts you too much you can switch to Linux if you haven't already.
Just like hardware: you are not trapped into a particular graphics card if your apps use OpenGL; don't like how your card works or how it harms your Freedom? Get a new one. In the meantime, at least your card works. It's hardly a trap if you can leave any time.
Inducing others into the trap Posted Mar 3, 2010 13:37 UTC (Wed) by malor (subscriber, #2973) [Link] How does Regular Linux limit my freedoms, whereas Linux-libre does not? Seriously? And before you start telling me about the ability to fix the code myself etc., I will remind you again: I'm no programmer. I could not make "tiny improvements here and there" since I'm not a programmer.To add to what lxoliva said... you're thinking of yourself as a single entity. "It doesn't affect me directly, so why should I care?" But modern operating systems and applications are ridiculously complex entities, with codebases so large that individual programmers struggle to keep up with just one major program. Even the best programmers in the world, whether they're in Free software or proprietary, are dependent on the work of others. And if you're not a programmer yourself, you're even more dependent on them. So, when those programmers tell you that they can make your life better if they're allowed to completely understand hardware, and fix bugs and introduce new features in the code that runs that hardware, you should pay attention. Any given device with open firmware will be improved by that openness. Whatever functions it may or may not have, open code makes the possibility of new or repaired functionality possible, even if the manufacturer has lost interest in the product. Manufacturers who erect barriers to that kind of control over your hardware are using their control over that code to try to extract more money out of "the market", ie, you. It may be a limitation you're willing to accept, if their proprietary software is good enough, but you put yourself into a subservient position by doing so. You don't have to do that; you don't have to be subservient. And even if you personally would never change a firmware, there's thousands of people who will, and will happily share their improvement with you, often for free, since it costs them so little to give you a copy of their work. If you're a Linux user, it should be pretty apparent by now what an advantage Free software can be for you, giving you as much control over your software environment as you choose to exercise. Pushing that freedom down into the firmware is an important next step to really owning your computing environment, in being able to use your general-purpose computing devices for whatever you wish. There's no reason to have to put on shackles to to use a device, and the linux-libre project is an attempt to entirely remove those shackles, both on you and on everyone that contributes to your chosen ecosystem. Now, myself, I probably won't run this kernel, but I'm glad it exists. In fact, I hope the project eventually obsoletes itself. Just like Free software was so important to giving you choices about what you do with your operating system and applications, Free firmware gives you the same choices about your hardware. If a device has a feature, you can't be artificially excluded from that feature because you didn't pay a high enough price, or because the manufacturer would prefer to sell you something new instead. Marketers hate that idea, because they really love being able to sell the same code and hardware at multiple different price points, and force product churn by selling you a new product to do something your old product was perfectly capable of doing. Anything that marketers hate should be something of interest to you, because it's probably a net positive in your life.
Inducing others into the trap Posted Mar 3, 2010 14:14 UTC (Wed) by Janne (guest, #40891) [Link]
"So, when those programmers tell you that they can make your life better if they're allowed to completely understand hardware, and fix bugs and introduce new features in the code that runs that hardware, you should pay attention."
Sure. But this project does not help achieve that. All it does is that it removed a bunch of non-hackable code from the kernel. That code is still unhackable, regardless of whether it's in the kernel or not.
"You don't have to do that; you don't have to be subservient. And even if you personally would never change a firmware, there's thousands of people who will, and will happily share their improvement with you, often for free, since it costs them so little to give you a copy of their work."
Yep. But this project does not do that. Why is it that you think that thanks to this project, we will magically get open firmwares and the like? This project simply removed the binary-firmwares from the Kernel.
"If you're a Linux user, it should be pretty apparent by now what an advantage Free software can be for you, giving you as much control over your software environment as you choose to exercise."
Sure, but my ability to take advantage of that control is very limited. Like I said elsewhere, my main computer is a Mac, a proprietary OS. Yet that closedness has never harmed me in any shape or form. And the fact is that even though MacOS is closed, my user-enjoyment and productivity has gone up.
And if you are about to say that I'm "subservient" to Apple or something like that.... Well, go right ahead. You would be wrong, but you are entitled to your opinion. I view computers first and foremost as tools, and I want to use a computer that gives me maximum amount of satisfaction. And that computer happens to be a Mac running OS X. Is it stupid for me choose it over Linux? And I was 100% free to make that choice, no-one forced me.
"There's no reason to have to put on shackles to to use a device, and the linux-libre project is an attempt to entirely remove those shackles, both on you and on everyone that contributes to your chosen ecosystem."
That sounds all fine and dandy, "removing shackles". But what it gives in return is non-functioning computer. Is it really about "removing shackles" if you end up with non-working hardware? That seems like ultimate shackles to me. You can tell me about the benefits of free software while I stare at the computer that does not work. So the benefit is that it turns working computer in to non-working computer?
Now, don't get me wrong. I'm a big supporter of GPL, free software and open source. I just don't understand what this project hopes to accomplish. I would understand if they somehow tried to turn that non-hackable code in to free, hackable code. But that's not what they are doing, they are just removing it.
Roadmap to freedom Posted Mar 4, 2010 6:58 UTC (Thu) by lxoliva (subscriber, #40702) [Link]
As I wrote in the first thread way above, the greatest relevance of this project is not in the bits, but rather in the awareness. It's a matter of social mechanics.
If you already made the mistake of buying a computer that will only function if you feed it wiht your non-Free Software and your freedom, now you'll know that you and everyone else is missing essential freedoms and everything else this entails, including the benefits of a community helping improve the functioning of the device. (if you've ever found any program that does absolutely everything you want, everything you'll ever want, and do that just the perfect way for you, you may throw the first rock)
And then, once you know it, since you value freedom and the benefits it brings with it, you'll avoid making the same mistake next time.
The more people do that, the more pressure we, the community you and I are part of, will be making for vendors to respect us and our freedom. Pressure that matters for them, because, remember, we won't be making the same mistakes again, i.e., as you put it, we'll be voting with our wallets, not buying from vendors who treat us like dirt, which is something the announcement goes into as well.
Under this kind of pressure, the vendors might choose to continue down that path, and sell less and less, or do the little work it takes to respect our freedom, in which case they will sell to happy customers.
And it doesn't matter much how long the chain of distribution is. If we make pressure on those who want to sell to us, they will take care of transferring the pressure to their suppliers, and so on, until it gets to whoever can set the bits Free. And, if they don't, their direct customer will just pick another supplier: they won't keep on buying stuff that their own customers are not willing to buy.
That's the path set to recover freedom for all, so that we can all benefit. Refraining from giving positive feedback to the misbehavior is key, and awareness is key to accomplish that, and avoiding trivial and transparent functioning of devices that take your freedom away is key to raise awareness. This is how Linux-libre accomplishes that. See?, it's not that hard to understand.
Sure, it's a plan that requires cooperation from lots of people, it at times even requires making some sacrifices, but small ones, compared with what we have to gain if we succeed, and even smaller ones compared with sacrifices made for freedom throughout history.
Inducing others into the trap Posted Mar 4, 2010 2:59 UTC (Thu) by N0NB (guest, #3407) [Link]
It seems that not only do some wish to repaint the walls of their house or move said walls as they see fit, but they also want to (figuratively) recoat the inside of their hot water tank or reconfigure the internals of the gas valve on the furnace.
At some point we reach a practical limit of what we have the resources to do. And while I cheer Free drivers/firmware, removing the firmware blobs without a suitable replacement at hand (such as MadWifi's HAL sticking around until ath5k was capable) seems Quixotic to me. OTOH, a project such as this could only be born as a result of the incredible success of Free Software over the past almost 20 years.
Inducing others into the trap Posted Mar 3, 2010 13:08 UTC (Wed) by miguelsvieira (guest, #64029) [Link]
I think that an important point that you're missing, Janne, is that for we -- non-programmers members of the community -- it is not that easy to avoid (or simply stop) using those blobs, most of all when they are inside the kernel. To be sincere, I have absolutely no idea how many of them I run into when I use computers.
Having the option of a free kernel/distribution that -- just for starters -- lets you know exactly what pieces of hardware you have that would not function without blobs seems, for me, very good indeed. I believe that might help people (esp. non-programmers, such as you and me) wonder about what kinds of trade-offs we're making, how we could proceed differently etc. For example, how do I choose compliant hardware? Or, do I really want high performance 3D acceleration, considering that this would require me to accept many other bugs, eventually tiny but certainly resilient (as they would probably no be fixable by the community, because they're inside blobs)? Does my need for high performance 3D acceleration outweighs the value that I put on using and helping free software?
One of the things that I value in free software is the fact that it helps us in trying to overcome planned obsolescence for hardware. In that sense, choosing free over blob helps the community in making free, good drivers for old hardware -- something that is mostly ignored by hardware companies, which are interested in selling us more of their latest release. That latest release might work right now (with blobs), but of course the companies are not willing to guarantee that it will work when it becomes "old hardware".
The transparency of a completely "just-works" kernel deals away with the pondering of those issues. I believe I'd be much more hardware-conscious, as you suggest (in what I believe is your main argument: free kernels are unnecessary as long as people use free, compliant hardware), if I knew exactly where are the blobs, why they are needed etc. Then, one would even be able to decide that he can't "afford" to use the free kernel, and therefore stick to the nonfree one -- but at least it'd be an informed decision; which in the future could help that same person in avoiding a bad hardware purchase, and therefore in avoiding proprietary software.
Inducing others into the trap Posted Mar 4, 2010 20:10 UTC (Thu) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458) [Link] To find out which pieces of your machine use non-free firmware, it would be easier to go lspci(1) and such, and look up what you find in a list. Maintaining and publishing said list (with usage instructions, as required) would be a much better use of the time involved, IMHO. OTOH, with today's hardware increasingly "intelligent", I tend to doubt you'll find anything that doesn't use some non-free firmware, from the keyboard + mouse up.
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