Inducing others into the trap [LWN.net]

Inducing others into the trap

Posted Mar 3, 2010 6:58 UTC (Wed) by Janne (guest, #40891)
In reply to: Inducing others into the trap by lxoliva
Parent article: Linux-2.6.33-libre released

"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
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."

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
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."

You still haven't answered the simple question I asked: 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.

Like I said: the problem is that FSF looks at this from a programmers perspective. But most
people are NOT programmers. They try to cater to programmers, while everyone else is shunned.
End result is that Linux has something like 1% market-share. If this was about liberating users,
the resources would be invested in spreading free software as far and wide as possible. But
instead of that, we have wasted effort that remind me of inquisition. Like Linux-libre and
gNewSense that are about cleansing the world of proprietary code, as opposed to actually
spreading free software or making free software better.

"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
to hack the code has ZERO downsides for me. Well, what about programmers? Well, last time I
checked, they can keep on hacking Linux, even the "non-libre" version of it. Sure, there might be
bits and pieces that they can't access, but that problem can be solved by avoiding hardware that
needs those closed bits and pieces. Removing those bits doesn't really accomplish anything, you
just get a kernel that can do less. The fact that those bits reside on the hard-drive does NOT in
any shape or form limit the freedoms of the user. They MIGHT limit the freedoms, if the users
makes the decision to use them. But even then, that is something the users decides.

Isn't it one freedom to choose using hardware that needs proprietary bits? Aren't we free to
choose?

"I guess the reason you can't see the benefits of freedom is because of the blinds you let them
put on you."

Of course I can see the benefits of freedom. But the thing is that all these things are by
programmers, for programmers. How exactly would Linux-libre benefit me? How exactly would
it benefit my 70 year old mother? Because she could hack the code and fix problems herself?
O.... K.....

I'm not saying that GPL is bad, or free software is bad (far from it). What I AM saying is that this
effort is useless and waste of time. If someone cares so much about those binary-blobs, he can
choose to avoid them.

"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
here? How exactly am I being limited by running standard Linux-kernel as opposed to Linux-
libre? Seriously? That is a simple question and I wish to get an answer to it.

(Log in to post comments)

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.
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.

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
"You are still not making any sense."
, which makes me raise an eyebrow and think
"Hold on, *you* are the one not making any sense.",
which is what I wrote:
"it's nearly impossible to formulate something sensible enough to contribute to the thought process of the other side", leading to two people not making any sense to one another.

>Maybe what we need is exactly what you reject: different thinking.

Yeah, I know, "think different".
But from a broader perspective, the Free Software community already are the weirdos doing the different thinking; going in the direction towards proprietary software doesn't need any championing, it's the status-quo.

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
kind of benefits.

It seems to me that you are looking at present (as "now I can do X and Y,
with non-free software, but only X with free software, so I'll use
non-free software", with the risk that noone is aware that Y is non-free
and never having free software doing Y and no software doing Y~) while
lxoliva is looking forward (as "everyone must be aware that we can't do Y
with free software", hoping that someone will write/release free software
doing Y and Y~ in the future).

(It seems to me that the lines following lines ending with '-' are being
cut, at least from the preview)

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
* having hardware documentation that is not entirely full of crap
* having firmware not written in Object Intercal implemented in BLISS macros
* having no"! yes, sometimes the usual opcode for NOP deadlocks the branch predictor; we'll do a hardware fix someday, for now let them patch as(1)" in there,
etc. All of those are generally good things. And if some are *not* true, you'll probably have more good reasons to curse the bleeding vendor. Which doesn't mean that e.g. removal of fuloong 2f support would be an improvement (NOP breakage, making life rather interesting).

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.
", I would find such an action to be social and commendable.

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.