Intel's "redundant prefix issue"

Posted Nov 21, 2023 14:19 UTC (Tue) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183)
In reply to: Intel's "redundant prefix issue" by khim
Parent article: Intel's "redundant prefix issue"

> And, worse, hardware manufacturers have already changed their development model to incorporate upgradeable firmware

There are other forces at work here. Since devices sold to the public must have a two years warranty, if any serious bugs are found (as they will) the manufacturer has to fix it and given the choice between pushing a software update and replacing the device, the former is much cheaper. And additionally, pushing a update reduces the amount of electronic waste, for which there are also regulations.

Changes afoot making it harder to disclaim warranty for security issues in software is only going to accelerate this trend.

Intel's "redundant prefix issue"

Posted Nov 21, 2023 14:37 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

These are minor details. Of course hardware manufacturers have changed their development model to save money! That's what businesses do.

And if you understand that then the next question that you should ask is: how may they earn some money from getting that RYF mark?

Taking existing hardware with proprietary firmware, crippling it and selling it at higher prices is profitable.

Developing hardware and open firmware just to get RYF mark is not.

It's as simple as that.

Now, you may play with these rules, try to make it more profitable for hardware manufacturers to use your free software instead of writing your own software (that's how Linux have become indispensable).

And then, when certain classes of devices would become available with free firmware — you may demand these these have to come with free firmware.

Or you may just ignore Goodhart's law and get the opposite of what you are trying to achieve.

I can understand why FSF doesn't want to change rules of GPL: it's hard and costly to do and often backfires. But “certification marks”? It's completely normal for the certification mark rules to change over time, it's more-or-less inevitable because of Goodhart's law!

Yet FSF acts as if it may design something that works once and for all. Worse: it believes that precisely ignorance of economics would help them to achieve their goals, somehow.