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Purism Aims to Build a Philosophically Pure Laptop

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Re: Purism Aims to Build a Philosophically Pure Laptop

#121

Post by cottonseed »

caboteria wrote: post #97
dmicah wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm interested if anyone has any insight into why there is a such a push for "Free" software (for example by the FSF, Richard Stallman), but not also "Free" hardware.

From RMS himself: http://www.linuxtoday.com/infrastructure/1999062200505NWLF From the linked article: "Because copying hardware is so hard, the question of whether we're allowed to do it is not vitally important. I see no social imperative for free hardware designs like the imperative for free software. Freedom to copy software is an important right because it is easy now--any computer user can do it. Freedom to copy…

I'm a little surprised and disappointed by this answer. It seems like all four of Stallman's four essential freedoms of free software apply to hardware: to use as you wish, to study and modify, to distribute, and to distribute modifications [0]. Only the freedom to distribute is mitigated by the cost of copying hardware. The others all seem like an active battleground for end-user freedoms, and the freedom to distribute will be more important as both design tools and fabrication technologies become cheaper.

[0] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

Re: Purism Aims to Build a Philosophically Pure Laptop

#122

Post by cottonseed »

dmicah wrote: post #46
pingswept wrote: post #6

This appears to be similar to the open source hardware Novena laptop ( https://www.crowdsupply.com/kosagi/novena-open-laptop ), but closed source hardware. From the Purism crowdfunding campaign: "The Librem 15 is the first high-end laptop where you are in control and have complete visibility into the kernel, the operating system, and all software." It seems like the Novena came first and is substantially more free/op…

I'm interested if anyone has any insight into why there is a such a push for "Free" software (for example by the FSF, Richard Stallman), but not also "Free" hardware.

I've been wondering about this myself. My guess is that the utility argument of open source has culturally occluded the freedom arguments of free software. There's a reason we call it open source hardware and not free hardware.

In the DIY electronics community, when someone suggests building an open/free professional tool (e.g. oscillscope, power supply, etc.), everyone responds "you're crazy, it would be too expensive, you'll never beat the cheap Chinese supplies (like Rigol) on price". Right next door, you'll see people who go to insane lengths to study and after-market hack the very same hardware. Hacks that would be both massively easier and more accessible if the hardware was open. (I'm thinking in particular of a thread on EEVBlog where a guy completely desoldered and resoldered (!) his Rigol oscilloscope to reverse engineer the front end.) I think the Novena is an awesome counter-example to this argument and I hope more people take on projects like this. (I would if I had the skillz.)

Re: Purism Aims to Build a Philosophically Pure Laptop

#123

Post by cottonseed »

pingswept wrote: post #104
dmicah wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm interested if anyone has any insight into why there is a such a push for "Free" software (for example by the FSF, Richard Stallman), but not also "Free" hardware.

There is a push for open source hardware, but it is a substantially smaller movement. The Open Source Hardware just formed a year or two ago: http://www.oshwa.org/ The movement is growing, but it appears to be around 15 years behind software, and maybe not growing as quickly as OSS did.

OSS branding dates to around 1998, ~17yrs old. The GNU Manifesto was published in 1983, the free software movement is ~32 years old.

Re: Purism Aims to Build a Philosophically Pure Laptop

#124

Post by quanticle »

pmontra wrote: post #58

Partially offtopic, but looking at the case of that laptop I wondered if I am the only one that slides them to the right to have the touchpad and the spacebar aligned with the central symmetry axis of my body? That means having 2/3 of the screen to the right of my eyes, which is a waste because I end up piling windows with important information to the left, for not having to tilt my head to the right. I believe that…

>I wonder what are the numbers for the two groups of people "I must have a number pad" and "I don't use it".

I would be willing to bet that the first group is much larger than the second group. Anecdotally, it seems to me that the people who don't use the numberpad are touch typists, for whom the cost of moving their hands off the home row outweighs the benefits of having numbers spread out in a line. People who hunt-and-peck, on the other hand, seem to appreciate the spatial locality of the numberpad.

Re: Purism Aims to Build a Philosophically Pure Laptop

#125

Post by pingswept »

cottonseed wrote: post #123
pingswept wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a push for open source hardware, but it is a substantially smaller movement. The Open Source Hardware just formed a year or two ago: http://www.oshwa.org/ The movement is growing, but it appears to be around 15 years behind software, and maybe not growing as quickly as OSS did.

OSS branding dates to around 1998, ~17yrs old. The GNU Manifesto was published in 1983, the free software movement is ~32 years old.

True, but the GPL wasn't widely used until Linux took off in the mid-90's, roughly 20 years ago. So I was off by a few years, you're right.

(But I'd say the idea of free/libre software certainly predates even the GNU manifesto.)

Re: Purism Aims to Build a Philosophically Pure Laptop

#126

Post by yuhong »

cbd1984 wrote: post #55
hengheng wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Novena has the bottom-up approach of Bunnie saying "oh here's a cool chip. I'll build something around it and see how complete it will be in the end."Purism seems to say "Let's make a machine that lives up to everyone's expectation, and let's try and remove all closed source blobs from it". They are going the top-down way of stripping an X86 machine from all its secret firmware. I doubt they'll be as successful as Bu…

> They are going the top-down way of stripping an X86 machine from all its secret firmware. Do they consider CPU microcode updates to be secret firmware?

My feeling is that you are already executing CPU microcode on reset anyway.

Re: Purism Aims to Build a Philosophically Pure Laptop

#127

Post by cottonseed »

pingswept wrote: post #125
cottonseed wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OSS branding dates to around 1998, ~17yrs old. The GNU Manifesto was published in 1983, the free software movement is ~32 years old.

True, but the GPL wasn't widely used until Linux took off in the mid-90's, roughly 20 years ago. So I was off by a few years, you're right. (But I'd say the idea of free/libre software certainly predates even the GNU manifesto.)

What? When Linux was first released, the FSF had already written and released a ton of free software under the GPL, including Emacs (first release 1985), gcc (first release 1987), free versions of the unix command line utilities, etc.

Re: Purism Aims to Build a Philosophically Pure Laptop

#128

Post by comex »

dmm wrote: post #95
cbd1984 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are going the top-down way of stripping an X86 machine from all its secret firmware. Do they consider CPU microcode updates to be secret firmware?

The CPU is fused to accept non-signed microcode so someone could eventually replace the microcode with a free alternative.

It's fused to accept a non-signed BIOS. Microcode is separate and, considering how tight-lipped Intel is about it, almost certainly won't be customizable in the foreseeable future. (Unfortunately.)

Re: Purism Aims to Build a Philosophically Pure Laptop

#129

Post by comex »

belorn wrote: post #90
cbd1984 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are going the top-down way of stripping an X86 machine from all its secret firmware. Do they consider CPU microcode updates to be secret firmware?

I am not a CPU designer, so could someone explain the threat model of cpu microcode? Is it plausible that you could fit memory scraping code, including code that interacts with OS network drivers, all inside the cpu microcode without causing catastrophically impact on performance?

In addition to michaelt's comment, it's worth noting that security issues are only one of many reasons to prefer free software - at least in the opinion of the GNU crowd they are appealing to.
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