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GNU Boot sent a cease and desist to Libreboot

libreboot.org

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Re: GNU Boot sent a cease and desist to Libreboot

#161

Post by amatecha »

dcow wrote: post #144
amatecha wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I guess that could be better. I literally just read every comment by that user (not realizing it was the same person), thinking "oh dang this is rough" and then at the end seeing the "EDIT lol nm" and realizing I just totally got misled, AGAIN. Super uncool. If your text is proven false, I don't want to read it or even glance at it (or even have to scroll past it, or have my network/browser load it, for that mat…

You can only edit for a few hours.

Yeah, guess it was already too late then. :\

Re: GNU Boot sent a cease and desist to Libreboot

#162

Post by pmontra »

FireInsight wrote: post #120
bubblethink wrote: post #45

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.

This highlights why trademarks exist, to avoid confusion. I don't know the history of the project but once somebody starts calling some software Libreboot anybody else should stay clear of that name.

Re: GNU Boot sent a cease and desist to Libreboot

#163

Post by pmontra »

raverbashing wrote: post #159
bombolo wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and yet people love apple

Yes Because Preview works, KPDF works and Gview behaved weird or in the wrong way most of the time Apple builds the automatic car by removing the gear shift, Gnome builds it by removing the gas pedal and just having a button called "Go" which makes you go at 10mph

Not my experience. I have a Gnome desktop that maybe a Gnome developer have a hard time to recognize as such. It works as I want and I keep the convenience of being able to Google problems and solutions of a mainstream desktop (KDE being the other one) and not a more or less obscure one.

This means that under the hood, using extensions, you can customize that Gnome car. Can an Apple automatic car do that as easily?

Re: GNU Boot sent a cease and desist to Libreboot

#165

Post by eschaton »

wmf wrote: post #79
eschaton wrote: post #6

Just use port and use SmartFirmware, a BSD-licensed IEEE-1275 Open Firmware implementation. It even includes a C to OF bytecode compiler for ease in porting drivers.

As much nostalgia as I have for my Power Mac, Open Firmware doesn't solve anything in 2023. It doesn't natively boot any OS and it doesn't solve the blob "problem".

Open Firmware can boot an ELF image obtained in a variety of ways, and supply the booted image with both arguments and a device tree, it doesn’t need to do more to boot an OS. It can also be extended straightforwardly to provide boot security/attestation.

As for “solving” the “blob “problem,”” it provides a reasonable architecture for implementing drivers that are both platform- and architecture-independent; an OS can even choose to just use the drivers supplied by the firmware, by providing an equivalent environment.

In other words, it essentially solves the “How should an arbitrary system boot and pass control to an operating system, including how to interact with arbitrary devices?” problem. What more does anyone need?

Re: GNU Boot sent a cease and desist to Libreboot

#166

Post by fegu »

mst wrote: post #139
neilv wrote: 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…

I've had to referee disagreements between East Coast USians and Germans a few times before now, mostly in terms of acting as a protocol translation layer until they were both sufficiently calmed down to underail themselves and focus on the technical side again rather than being distracted by their differing communication styles. Generally once I'd helped them unpick that they collaborated happily and came up with som…

It would be interesting to read more about this. You should start a blog :)

Re: GNU Boot sent a cease and desist to Libreboot

#167

Post by ShamelessC »

cookiengineer wrote: post #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 b…

Sure are an unfortunate number of trolls here.

Edit: I just love finding that communities I participate in have a non-negligible amount of bigotry that goes completely unchallenged and unmoderated.

In fact I would not be surprised at this point if moderation somehow found me in violation of the rules. God forbid anyone try to defend marginalized groups. Like that’s some affront to free speech or an inherent dog whistle to my “fellow SJW’s”.

Re: GNU Boot sent a cease and desist to Libreboot

#168

Post by mcv »

whstl wrote: post #25
saghm wrote: post #9

Obviously we don't have the full context of prior communication, but the message screenshot is super passive aggressive ("just a little reminder you're not a maintainer" when obviously both parties are aware, "you're welcome to send us patches that we will review if we want to" very implying that the patches might just be ignored). It's possible the libreboot author also wasn't communicating professionally either, bu…

The fact that the person who sent the C&D email allegedly tried to "take over" the Libreboot name (according to TFA) is also not a good look. I found this: https://libreboot.at > Who are we? Denis ‘GNUtoo’ Carikli and Adrien ‘neox’ Bourmault. We created this and maintain it. > take a stand for fully free software is to change URLs across the web from to , and to let people know that no other version of Libreboot is r…

I hadn't heard about this drama before, but as I can piece things together, Leah has been maintaining Libreboot and another boot system for years. Denis and Adrien disagreed with Leah's decision to include binaries, created their own version of Libreboot without those binaries and published it under the same name on a very similar domain trying to claim the existing Libreboot name for their version.

Then I suspect Leah disagreed with that fork both on technical merits (it's based on old code) and with the stealing of the name, but she agreed with the need for a version without the binaries, so she made that and published it under the name GNUboot, intended for Denis and Adrien to base their work on, and now Denis and Adrien are complaining that she's misusing the GNU name.

Is that roughly a correct summary?

Because if it is, it sounds to me like both sides do have valid points, but handled the disagreement very poorly. Denis and Adrien complaining that Leah stole the GNU name when they just stole the Libreboot name, sounds very hypocritical. The whole thing would be a lot better if both sides stopped the drama and powergames and just worked together to create the best possible boot systems; one with the binaries and one without.

Re: GNU Boot sent a cease and desist to Libreboot

#169

Post by raverbashing »

pmontra wrote: post #163
raverbashing wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes Because Preview works, KPDF works and Gview behaved weird or in the wrong way most of the time Apple builds the automatic car by removing the gear shift, Gnome builds it by removing the gas pedal and just having a button called "Go" which makes you go at 10mph

Not my experience. I have a Gnome desktop that maybe a Gnome developer have a hard time to recognize as such. It works as I want and I keep the convenience of being able to Google problems and solutions of a mainstream desktop (KDE being the other one) and not a more or less obscure one. This means that under the hood, using extensions, you can customize that Gnome car. Can an Apple automatic car do that as easily?

It's good that you can do this, but most people prefer the default experience instead of fiddling with customizations to make it more special. And yes, fiddling and customizing is cool, when you have time.

So between the Apple automatic and Gnome "pick customizations" I know which one I prefer (and yes Apple does have extensions, settings, etc). Yes, there won't be a perfect solution and sometimes you kinda miss some minor thing but it is minor.

For example, looking at: https://extensions.gnome.org/#page=2 there's Date and Time formatter (you can do that in Apple) and "Sound Input & Output Device Chooser" which you can do by going in settings in Apple - but it doesn't matter most of the time because the out of box experience works almost perfectly

Re: GNU Boot sent a cease and desist to Libreboot

#170

Post by tommiegannert »

mst wrote: post #139
neilv wrote: 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…

I've had to referee disagreements between East Coast USians and Germans a few times before now, mostly in terms of acting as a protocol translation layer until they were both sufficiently calmed down to underail themselves and focus on the technical side again rather than being distracted by their differing communication styles. Generally once I'd helped them unpick that they collaborated happily and came up with som…

I can highly recommend https://erinmeyer.com/books/the-culture-map/ on the topic of cultural communication styles.
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