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GNU Boot sent a cease and desist to Libreboot

libreboot.org

121–130 of 228 posts

Re: GNU Boot sent a cease and desist to Libreboot

#121
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to remind myself not to read too much into such things, for three reasons that we all know, but which may bear repeating to ourselves: 1. Open source is global, and not everyone is a native speaker of English. 2. Among English speakers, not everyone has the same cultural conventions and nuances. Even within US cities, you can drive 15 minutes, and find very different conventions. And culture in Boston isn't th…

That's an essential point. At the same time the interpretation isn't completely random or unpredictable; we're all humans, with the same emotions, the same physiological expressions of them, and the same internal responses to others' emotions. If you yell at someone anywhere, you can expect a certain range of emotional responses.

You know, sometimes it's very hard to judge.

I'm of xUSSR descent, and sometimes when I see a group of chinese colleagues speaking together loudly, it is very weird to me, as soometimes they are so loud that if it was in Russian it would mean that the brawl could start any second. It is hard to judge sometimes.

Even in written communication it is was told to me many times that many Russians, especially those with B1/B2 levels, as well as Jewish people are extremely direct, and it may be perceived as native speakers as rude, although it isn't meant to.

Re: GNU Boot sent a cease and desist to Libreboot

#122
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sources to get the reader started? Seems like the type of project that, originating out of defending against user-hostility or user-negligence, would have some (possibly overly?) passionate people behind it.

Just Google "libreboot drama" and make sure to clear your schedule for the evening.

Wow, it's been a while since I heard so much use of "SJW". I think Leah's actions here seemed defensible. You can easily understand how a trans person would feel uncomfortable being part of or under a project that they find as hostile to their own identity.

Re: GNU Boot sent a cease and desist to Libreboot

#124

Completely pointless drama, but there is a real issue here in that people (phoronix) mistook the unofficial one for the real one ( https://www.phoronix.com/news/GNU-Boot-20230717 ). This is their way of interjecting.

This is kind of the fault of phoronix, as Leah's release was always marked as unofficial.

It's still a trademark problem if I go around calling my site Unofficial Facebook.

I'm struggling to see how there's an argument either party are in the right here for trying to squat on each other's names.

Re: GNU Boot sent a cease and desist to Libreboot

#125

[flagged]

GNU is somewhere between a non-profit software outfit and a cult in a way that is greater than either. I don't agree with all of the positions that GNU takes in specific, but in aggregate I think the movement has been a huge force for good because of its cultlike unbending adherence to its philosophy. It would be bad if GNU stomped out all other philosophies of developing software and products, because it would remov…

> but in aggregate I think the movement has been a huge force for good because of its cultlike unbending adherence to its philosophy

Cringe. I will only participate in communities with meaningful codes of conduct.

Re: GNU Boot sent a cease and desist to Libreboot

#126

Functional code is better than non-functional code. What good is libreboot if you can't use it? You're more than welcome to use the now-maintained notgnuboot.vimuser.org or libreboot censored if you hate binary blobs, and are also more than welcome to try to find hardware that doesn't have closed source blobs built in. I love free software, and will never stop, but "Libre" is only great in a vacuum.

> Functional code is better than non-functional code. What good is libreboot if you can't use it?

Some people believe that the absence of antifeatures is more important than the presence of features. That's... honestly one of GNU's big controversial ideas, for decades now.

Re: GNU Boot sent a cease and desist to Libreboot

#128
There were some harassment threads popping up over the last couple months, both on /g/ and /pol/ where the chans started to doxx her again.

So I would be careful in reading into this. Of course no evidence because by the time it appears here, most threads and comments have been deleted already and the desuarchive-like websites almost never contain all comments. That's how 4chan works after all.

My comment:

Leah has been very helpful when I started to debug my old T440p at the time, both in regards to disassembly, flashing, debugging and pointing me in the right direction.

There are some snarky comments down here which seem to be from chans, and they seem to imply that Leah never shipped her libreboot flashed Thinkpads (implying fraud), which AFAIK didn't happen. There were too many orders at some point for a single person to handle, and she caught up with those later; and communicated that clearly.

Leah, if you are reading this: Don't feed the trolls, they gonna get bored if you ghost them. Treat them like the 5 year olds that they behave like, and don't read too much into this shitstorm. I'm very thankful for your very appreciated work!

Re: GNU Boot sent a cease and desist to Libreboot

#129
post #85
post #69

Libreboot is such an unfortunate name, as you could also read the name as a library dedicated to rebooting a computer.

I didn't downvote you by the way, was someone else. I am in holiday in Spain and surrounded by the use of the word Libre regarding libraries and books. So the same thought as your own also crossed my mind.

I think they were going for "lib reboot" like "lib c" or "lib x11"

Re: GNU Boot sent a cease and desist to Libreboot

#130
post #116

[flagged]

Leah created Libreboot in 2014.

Leah stepped away from Libreboot in 2016, after some drama between her and the FSF. Two Libreboot community members, Andrew and Sebastian, became the Libreboot maintainers.

In 2021, after Andrew and Sebastian managed to go 5 years without doing a release, Leah forcefully took the project back over in order to get releases going again.

Leah also started a "sister project" to Libreboot, Osboot, which had a different (non-FSF-friendly) firmware/microcode policy in order to support more hardware. It is my understanding that on all hardware that can be supported without binary blobs that Osboot still did not include any and was equivalent to Libreboot.

In November 2022, Leah merged Osboot into Libreboot, adopting Osboot's firmware/microcode policy for Libreboot.

In response to this policy change, two other community members, Denis and Adrien, forked libreboot.org as libreboot.at, and claim to be the "genuine" Libreboot. Neither Denis nor Adrien were Libreboot contributors before that (edit: Denis contributed 2 documentation patches in 2019). libreboot.at is a snapshot of pre-osboot-merge Libreboot; there are not any new releases there.

In June 2023, Denis and Adrien decided to start work toward doing new releases under the name "GNU Boot". They have not yet done a release of GNU Boot.

In July 2023, Leah posted an "Unofficial GNU Boot 20230717 release" to libreboot.org. Adrien sent Leah the "C&D" about using the "GNU Boot" name. Leah removed the release from libreboot.org, and instead put up https://notgnuboot.vimuser.org/ .

Adrien sending that message is ironic, given that Adrien and Denis are trying to steal the Libreboot name from Leah.

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