| |||||||||||||
The other side of the storyThe other side of the storyPosted Sep 29, 2011 13:03 UTC (Thu) by coriordan (guest, #7544)In reply to: Papering over a binary blob by geofft Parent article: Papering over a binary blob
(Skip to last paragraph for my thoughts on this article.)
FSF defends the four freedoms of free software, so it's only logical that they wouldn't endorse a distro that encourages people to install software that denies those four freedoms.
On GFDL, I mostly agree with you, but I still use the GFDL. I trust FSF to fix their licence some day (or make GPL4 a real software+docs licence). There's no other body that I'd trust to get it right in the long term.
As for your third paragraph, about FSF's statements not getting enough critical review? You must live on a different internet. :-) People somehow expect all perfection, all the time from FSF. How about commenting constructively instead of complaining about it as if it's set in stone?
...of course, it doesn't help that this article gives no time to FSF's reasoning. (Does FSF have an article that explains it?) I'm not well informed about this issue, but it seems obvious that firmware that's written to be upgradeable will have more extensive functionality. Non-upgradeable firmware would focus on doing the minimal stuff. Put another way, there are three types of software: non-upgradeable blobs, upgradeable blobs, and free software. If we say that we accept the second type, why would device manufacturers ever give us the last type? There's no point in asking for certain freedoms if you permit an infinitely big loophole. More and more stuff would just be migrated into the upgradeable blobs section and we'd just get some UI code.
(Log in to post comments)
Well, if we accept something is a twisted way... we still accept something... Posted Sep 29, 2011 13:24 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] Put another way, there are three types of software: non-upgradeable blobs, upgradeable blobs, and free software. If we say that we accept the second type, why would device manufacturers ever give us the last type? Good question. But here we have another case: firmware from second class (very firmly in second class - it includes mini-RTOS) is accepted by pretending it's firmware of the first class (this binary blob was never intended to be fixed and unupgradeable; the only reason it's not updated is the fact that it's old one and thus almost unsopported). If we accept firmware of the second class by doing the hard work of crippling our devices and pretending it's firmware of the first class, they why manufacturers should bother with the last class?>
Well, if we accept something is a twisted way... we still accept something... Posted Sep 30, 2011 13:01 UTC (Fri) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]
Ok, I don't have the answer to that :-)
I've made a page on the Libreplanet wiki for discussing this:
|
|||||||||||||