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Free Circuits FoundationFree Circuits FoundationPosted Jul 26, 2012 20:53 UTC (Thu) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313)In reply to: Free Circuits Foundation by jebba Parent article: GNU Linux-libre 3.5-gnu: Free and a half
> Which processor they run on is irrelevant from the perspective of the FSF.
right, according to them what matters is if the software has any ability to be upgraded.
according to the FSF logic, they would be happy to have a system that booted from Windows in ROM (because it can't be updated by the manufacturer or the user), but are unwilling to have Linux run on a system that has a video card with the ability to update the firmware stored in flash on the video card.
Guess what, there are a lot of companies that would love to sell you a non-updateable device that you replaced every time there was a new update required.
do you really think that would be a better world?
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Free Circuits Foundation Posted Jul 26, 2012 21:49 UTC (Thu) by jebba (✭ supporter ✭, #4439) [Link]
> unwilling to have Linux run on a system that has a video card with the ability to update the firmware stored in flash on the video card.
Where do you get this from? RMS himself used proprietary systems to bootstrap everything, and I bet there are plenty within FSF which may have a system which may have a part that can be flashed. I don't think they've ever said "never run a system which can be flashed". What they are doing is distributing software which removes non-free parts and references.
You are confusing their goal of systems that have free/open firmware, with a mandate that you can't use a system that isn't 100% perfect.
Free Circuits Foundation Posted Jul 26, 2012 22:03 UTC (Thu) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
If they have no objection to running things in ROM, but do have objections to the OS loading binary blobs into the processor, then they should not object to running a system with the OS in ROM, but (as this topic shows), they do object to running a system with free software that loads a binary blob into another piece of hardware (like a video card) to run on that other hardware.
The Openmoko example where they wanted to have them modify the hardware to make it impossible to replace a binary blob rather than have the identical blob loaded from the OS is a perfect example of them following their policy to it's illogical extreme.
Given two devices that are otherwise identical, they should prefer the device that has the software/firmware able to be replaced by the user over the device that the user cannot replace the software on.
Yes, it's far better if the software being loaded is open, nobody is disagreeing with that. What we are disagreeing over is the idea that hardware the user cannot load software on is better than hardware the user can load software on.
Free Circuits Foundation Posted Aug 2, 2012 12:37 UTC (Thu) by TRauMa (guest, #16483) [Link]
What I don't get is that you keep talking about the user being able to replace the blob. Replace with what? He can't create a new blob, he can't make changes to the original blob - the only thing he *can* do is replace it with another blob from the vendor.
On a system where this is possible, he can actually be coerced to "upgrade", and there may be other "functionality" baked in that he doesn't want.
On a system where this is not possible, the vendor has no easy way to make the system less free after the fact. Given this, the user is protected better.
Free Circuits Foundation Posted Aug 2, 2012 13:30 UTC (Thu) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]
Reverse-engineered free firmware was developed for the PCI Broadcom 802.11 devices, permitting them to be used for academic research into new wireless protocols. That would have been impossible if the firmware had been in ROM.
Free Circuits Foundation Posted Jul 27, 2012 8:51 UTC (Fri) by etienne (subscriber, #25256) [Link]
> do you really think that would be a better world?
It may become a better world, long term, because the company selling you a new hardware to fix a bug you need becomes very expensive, no one buy anything more from them, and they go bust.
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