Is it certified by FSF's RYF (Respect your Freedom) program?

Posted Oct 11, 2015 13:12 UTC (Sun) by pboddie (guest, #50784)
In reply to: Is it certified by FSF's RYF (Respect your Freedom) program? by jeff@uclinux.org
Parent article: The new Linksys WRT1900ACS router

"Us vs them" indeed! Things like RYF are all about vendors working with other people to ensure that the supplied source code for a particular device actually builds and delivers the shipped software, rather than the vendor having to be quizzed about the source code and firing back e-mails linking to hastily-prepared archives on random file-sharing sites, with all of this auditing effort being expended by individuals mostly in their own time. All to be able to validate licence compliance and, in this case, claims that are made in the publicity for the product.

Sure, I can waste my own time doing this kind of thing for everything, or I can delegate at least some of it to an organisation I personally trust (as do many others) whose involvement also adds a degree of credibility to the way the vendor manages their software development and release processes. No-one is moving any goalposts: all they are doing is suggesting that the vendor document their goal-scoring, rather than some random person on the Internet having to do it for them (and writing it up in a lengthy blog post in an exposé of the vendor's software-related practices).

Is it certified by FSF's RYF (Respect your Freedom) program?

Posted Oct 12, 2015 16:01 UTC (Mon) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link]

Personally I am only going to be interested in running openwrt on a router of this sort, unless it has something extra-special going on or if it is a 'enterprise' grade switch running something like 'cumulus linux'.

Does OpenWRT or Cumulus Linux themselves even meet the definition of 'free software that respects your freedoms' under the FSF's definitions? I really doubt it.

So is RYF going to be something that I consider highly important or relevant? No, of course not. And I don't think most people here will consider it that relevant. It's a 'nice to have' thing, not a requirement. RYF is a nice thing, but it is too narrow in scope and divergent goals from most people means that it's not really that useful as a certification for most people.

If you are a hard-core FSF-type then, yeah sure, it matters to you. But for most people it is probably never going to be that important despite the effort FSF puts into it.