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FSF Announces Hardware Endorsement Criteria
sveinungkv writes "The Free Software Foundation has announced criteria for the hardware endorsement program 'Respects Your Freedom.' From the announcement: 'The desire to own a computer or device and have full control over it, to know that you are not being spied on or tracked, to run any software you wish without asking permission, and to share with friends without worrying about Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) — these are the desires of millions of people who care about the future of technology and our society. (...) With our endorsement mark and the strong criteria that back it, we plan to bridge that gap and demonstrate to manufacturers that they stand to gain plenty by making hardware that respects people's freedom instead of curtailing it.' While it currently contains some requirements that many may find broader than what they personally need, the remaining criteria would make the FSF endorsement a useful tool when looking for devices that give the owner control over the device they have bought and paid for. The criteria are still open for feedback."
Now more than ever before, we need people to understand the difference between open and locked-down hardware, and to help them make rational choices while shopping.
Translation: The "rational choice" is only the one that I approve of you making. People do understand the difference, they just overwhelming don't care.
To me, it is unthinkable that my personal computers should be remote-controlled by a third party
Then *gasp* don't buy that product. Wow, that was hard, right?
but the crowds are only beginning to wake up to the pain that proprietary platforms are causing them.
If by "the crowds" you mean a bunch of irrelevant whining by some nerds on a few tech sites, then yes, they truly are "waking up".
So you actually think any major hardware manufacturer gives a shit about an F$F endorsement? Seriously?!?
The problem here is that FSF doesn't understand "free" means. They are just as restrictive as anyone else based on that one restriction. They just see themselves as better than the others, when the reality is they are exactly the same, maybe worse.
Open and Free means without restrictions, and adding their own just means they miss the point.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
worst case scenario - there is no change and status quo remains
Not quite. Worst case scenario involves a cult-like user following who won't stop praddling on at parties about how cool and open their spiffy new phone/laptop is. Then we'll have to open FSF Friend Bars, too.
SO, exactly how does restricting "Works With" badging help the user? How does that make users "more free" than now?
It doesn't, as far as I can tell. And you missed my point about claiming to be for "open and free" while adding restrictions is neither "open" nor "free".
If they were wanting to help users, they wouldn't care about anything other than making HARDWARE open and free of restrictions.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
It also won't fly if they can't even agree on the industry standard term DRM. While we geeks can think of it as Digital Restrictions Management all we want, the suits and lawyers will laugh us out of the room until we can be grown ups and use the terms correctly as used by the industry.
And you seem to have way too much time on your hand to care so much about my posts.
Both of which have been show to be false, especially with the App Store.
That may be true, but the users still have that perception which is the entire point you seem to be missing.
But your responses come off as so very angry.
Boohoo. Do you need me to call the waahmbulance?
That is NOT what that RULE is saying. That rule is about BADGING (labels), and has NOTHING to do with open and free hardware. I'll quote it again, so you are clear. THIS has NOTHING to do with the HARDWARE and suitability to use by users.
It isn't about functionality, it is about badging.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
No, it's because RM$ promised to let me butt fuck him and after I paid him he gypped me.
Repeating yourself and getting louder doesn't make you more right, it just makes you look ignorant and annoying, and is a sad reflection on the state of discussion in the world.
Either way, once again, it's not about freedom for everyone, its about freedom for the *users*. Arguing this point using restrictions on parties other than the *users* is a tangent at best, and deception at worst.
a handful of selfish greedy people are no match for millions of selfish, greedy people -u4ya
I do realize that a lot of people aren't going to need to upgrade their hardware just because MS has pulled support of their version of Windows.
Yeah, because only getting 10+ years of support for a version of Windows is so unreasonable. I mean, I can still get patches and backports of all my apps and kernel changes to a 10 year old version of Debian, right? Oh wait...