Inducing others into the trap [LWN.net]

Inducing others into the trap

Posted Mar 3, 2010 14:14 UTC (Wed) by Janne (guest, #40891)
In reply to: Inducing others into the trap by malor
Parent article: Linux-2.6.33-libre released

"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.

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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.