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The FSF’s relationship with firmware is harmful to free software users

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Re: The FSF’s relationship with firmware is harmful to free software users

#161

Post by seba_dos1 »

kryptiskt wrote: post #14
jeroenhd wrote: post #5

I think the ideology of the FSF is a perfectly fine one. It's the hardware vendors that insist on binary blobs that are the problem here. Nobody produces truly free consumer hardware and nobody has produced any for years now. Everything is hidden away because of fears of patent lawsuits and other people copying this One Neat Trick when initializing the devices. Intel would lose very little if it published the source…

> I think the ideology of the FSF is a perfectly fine one. It's the hardware vendors that insist on binary blobs that are the problem here. Their ideology has led them into preferring proprietary firmware that is inaccessible to the user like in the Purism example. I hate that, there is hope that a device that requires binary blobs from the main OS can be reverse engineered and free software developed for it. Making…

> proprietary firmware that is inaccessible to the user like in the Purism example. I hate that

Personally I'd hate that too - thankfully, that's not what happens on the Librem 5 (see my other comments in this thread for details).

Re: The FSF’s relationship with firmware is harmful to free software users

#162

Post by kaba0 »

tmalsburg2 wrote: post #129
BrS96bVxXBLzf5B wrote: post #74

Attending an RMS talk at a university ~8 years ago, some (increasingly irritated) lecturers questioned him on the use of proprietary graphics drivers in image processing for use in medical equipment and research. While RMS argued his absolute stance that proprietary drivers are never permissible, the lecturers argued that the drivers were literally saving lives and people would die without them. "They should die for…

Counterpoint: How many are dying because the software isn’t free? It’s possible that more could be saved if it was. Perhaps harm doesn’t rank highly for those seeking to make profits from medical equipment?

You think software companies get rich from the proprietary software in medical equipment sold in low quantities that cost a million dollar and is made from super strong magnets creating insane magnetic forces?

Answering your question: probably zero. Medical equipment is expensive due to the very high-tech technology it requires (the aforementioned magnets, but for ultrasound imaging one has to simultaneously output and receive sound waves in multiple dimensions) as well as the safety level being so high (you don’t want the given radiation amount overflow due to a bug).

Find blame in for-profit insurances instead.

Re: The FSF’s relationship with firmware is harmful to free software users

#163

Post by floatboth »

throwaway81523 wrote: post #140

I had a discussion similar to this with RMS a while back and he seemed to think that the x86 and ARM architectures were completely hopeless for this because of the management engines etc. At that time there were credible attempts to build completely blob-free POWER9 systems, so Ifigured that was the thing to get once they got a bit more affordable. I don't think the Talos stuff ended up blob free, but it is way less…

Most processors with Arm cores do not have "management engines", in fact lots are almost blob-free. Some like Marvell Armada 7k/8k can run without any blobs.

Re: The FSF’s relationship with firmware is harmful to free software users

#164

Post by seba_dos1 »

kaba0 wrote: post #152
csande17 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sure sucks that device makers just have to wait and hope someone writes free firmware. If only they had some way to cause the firmware to be written, perhaps involving things like "money" or "employees" or "contracts with vendors". The alternatives to this policy are allowing all blobs, in which case the RYF certification isn't actually verifying anything, or not allowing any blobs, in which case RYF cannot certif…

You seem to miss that these devices are often full of patented parts, so in most cases even if the manufacturer wanted to, they can’t provide sources. Also, modems are often legally mandated to have certain firmware (so that restricted frequencies are adhered to)

> even if the manufacturer wanted to, they can’t provide sources

In many cases they don't even have them or may not be aware that there's an upgradable firmware in some of the components they're using at all.

Re: The FSF’s relationship with firmware is harmful to free software users

#165

Post by orlp »

zauguin wrote: post #93
wmf wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The FSF had to make a compromise, but many people think they drew the line in the wrong place. When no reasonable hardware can meet the "compromise" version of RYF it just causes users to bounce off.

I think the issue isn't that much that no reasonable hardware can archive it, but that the "compromise" actively encourages not just insecure systems, but also making systems even less free . It's a bit like saying that a Windows notebook is only "free" if you can't install other systems and updates are disabled. There probably is more or less reasonable hardware which could implement these restrictions, but such har…

I think a good analogy is the parable of the cobra problem. A city suffers from too many cobras so the government puts a bounty on each dead cobra you hand in. The result? People massively breed cobras to hand them in. The government realizes this and stops the program. Subsequently all breeders lose interest and dump the cobras, leading to an even bigger problem.

Re: The FSF’s relationship with firmware is harmful to free software users

#166

Post by marcan_42 »

marcan_42 wrote: post #57
r283492 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The malicious/abusive parts of nonfree software are almost always tied to it's updatability. Avoiding updatable nonfree software prevents users from entering into an abusive relationship with a nonfree software vendor. https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/proprietary.en.html , 550 instances of malicious functionalities, I'd bet all instances are for software where the vendor can update it. Your argument is like "Banning g…

People keep bringing this up like proprietary software can always be unilaterally updated by the vendor. That's not how it works with firmware blobs, the vast, vast majority of the time. The user has the choice to run whatever firmware version they want, for as long as they want. They have strictly more freedom than if the software were not updatable, since they can choose the least evil version. I can't believe peop…

Incidentally, I'm on their list as a victim:

> 2010-03

> Sony restricted access to the PlayStation 3 GPU, so people who installed a GNU/Linux operating system on the console couldn't use it at full capacity. When some of them broke the restriction, Sony removed the ability to install other operating systems. Then users broke that restriction too, but got sued by Sony.

I'm one of the people who got sued by Sony. And I still think the FSF's take on all this is terrible.

Re: The FSF’s relationship with firmware is harmful to free software users

#167

Post by seba_dos1 »

yellowapple wrote: post #103

Not only does the FSF object to the inclusion of nonfree firmware, but it also objects to even so much as making it available. Case study here would be OpenBSD, which is about as free of an operating system as it gets, and which does not ship with nonfree firmware by default. However, because of the existence of the `fw_update` command (which - by the explicit consent of the user/owner of the machine - fetches any no…

I think it's important to understand that "being free" and "endorsed by FSF" are two completely distinct states. It's not enough to be fully free to get endorsed - FSF has their right to decide fully arbitrarily what's acceptable enough to endorse it and what isn't, and being technically free is just one of the aspects they are considering. Endorsement isn't technical, it's political.

> the FSF considers the whole OS nonfree

As an example, the FSF does not consider Debian nonfree - they even acknowledge that "Debian is the only common non-endorsed distribution to keep nonfree blobs out of its main distribution"; they just don't want to endorse it because it points people to nonfree software. As a user, I don't mind that it does so I use Debian, but FSF is free to not want to endorse it because of that.

Re: The FSF’s relationship with firmware is harmful to free software users

#168

Post by medo-bear »

cmeacham98 wrote: post #9
MathMonkeyMan wrote: post #3

I'm well out of my realm of expertise here, but I had a gut reaction to: > Libreboot, being FSF-recommended, also has this policy of disallowing firmware blobs in the source tree, despite it being a source of nothing but problems. Later the author points out how there isn't any contemporary libre hardware that would satisfy users (vaguely but reasonably described), and so "free" solutions utilize loopholes in the leg…

> Why accuse the FSF of hypocrisy? I'm not sure I fully agree with the author, but I think their point is that the FSF makes exceptions for binary blobs in some places because of usability, but then denies similar exceptions elsewhere because they're not libre. The complaint is that the decision on what counts as being included in the loopholes appears largely arbitrary, at least from an outsider's perspective.

last time i looked at their guidelines i understood it that proprietry blobs will be tolerated as long as libre alternatives dont exist. for an organisation that values free software above all else (including security) i think this is a principled approach. i fail to see any hypocricy

on the other hand whenever there is some GNU/FSF topic on hn there are always the same people taking the opportunity to throw mud at these organisations. think of this what you will

Re: The FSF’s relationship with firmware is harmful to free software users

#169

Post by tmalsburg2 »

kaba0 wrote: post #162
tmalsburg2 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterpoint: How many are dying because the software isn’t free? It’s possible that more could be saved if it was. Perhaps harm doesn’t rank highly for those seeking to make profits from medical equipment?

You think software companies get rich from the proprietary software in medical equipment sold in low quantities that cost a million dollar and is made from super strong magnets creating insane magnetic forces? Answering your question: probably zero. Medical equipment is expensive due to the very high-tech technology it requires (the aforementioned magnets, but for ultrasound imaging one has to simultaneously output a…

Yes, I do think that "software companies" are aiming to make money off of software (by definition). That aside, I do not understand what point you're trying to make. Sure, software development is likely not the most expensive part of medical devices (although I wouldn't be so sure that's generally true). Free software could still speed up R&D and therefore help save lives.

Re: The FSF’s relationship with firmware is harmful to free software users

#170

Post by [deleted] »

random314 wrote: post #88
BrS96bVxXBLzf5B wrote: post #74

Attending an RMS talk at a university ~8 years ago, some (increasingly irritated) lecturers questioned him on the use of proprietary graphics drivers in image processing for use in medical equipment and research. While RMS argued his absolute stance that proprietary drivers are never permissible, the lecturers argued that the drivers were literally saving lives and people would die without them. "They should die for…

Which talk was this and what kind of medical equipment?

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