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Free Software Foundation Endorses a "Truly Free" Laptop
An anonymous reader writes "The Free Software Foundation announced today the first laptop they have been able to certify as-is that respects the user's freedoms. The laptop is free down to using Coreboot in place of a proprietary BIOS. The OS shipped on the laptop is Trisquel, the Ubuntu derived Linux OS that removes all traces of proprietary firmware, patented formats, etc. The only issue though for new customers is this endorsed laptop comes down to being a refurbished 2006 ThinkPad X60 with single or dual-core Intel CPU, 1GB+ of RAM, 60GB+ HDD, and a 1024x768 12.1-inch screen, while costing $320+ USD (200 GBP). The FSF-certified refurbished laptops are only offered for sale through the Gluglug UK shop. Are these outdated specs worth your privacy and freedom?"
I support the FSF, but I can really just install free software on my own computers. This even includes coreboot usually. And they're a lot less expensive and a lot more powerful. I suppose it might be good to buy if your child needs a laptop or something.
Seriously. I laughed.
Your privacy can be compromised with open hardware, just as easily as with closed.
Freedom I see, however.
What's so wrong with installing linux on a real laptop?
What is the point without free and open hardware too?
...what can you do on it besides run gcc?
Mind you, I'm not being a troll, nor am I dismissing the principles behind what they're doing. However, I am wondering how long it'll stay 'pure' before the user realizes "hey, I can't run $favorite_item, even though it normally runs fine on Linux!"
I suspect that those few who bother will likely give up and park Ubuntu/Fedora/SomethingElse on it in very short order.
(won't even touch on the fact that it's an older spec...)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Is the harddrive running open-source firmware too? How could I possibly store my data on a device that uses proprietary software?
Not really seeing what I get out of paying them to do this when in theory I could just make my own from a used laptop off eBay.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
This path the FSF has taken to "create" a FLOSS system is not a bad one.
Instead of needing to manufacture a new laptop, simply "refurbish" an existing model and gauge your target market.
If the demand grows, newer models may be refurbished until it's economically viable to manufacture some.
I believe the "truly free" system here is just a model of what the FSF would like to see available in the market and not an actual business plan to compete in the marketplace to sell computers.
...like "Made in China."
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Nope.
My ability to work and get things done is far more valuable to me.
The FSF will always be in the minority on this issue.
I'm sure ther's microcode in that intel CPU that's not opensource, along with many other micros on the board.
We're going to need open-source processors where I can inspect the verilog and masks myself!
Free as in beer?
I'll take delivery of 1,000,000 units, please!
Why not just go to Debian?
all that proprietary stuff is separated into contrib or non-free
Coreboot still applies microcode "binary blobs" from CPU vendors, so this still isn't truly free - http://www.coreboot.org/FAQ#Is_coreboot_applying_x86_microcode_patches.3F
Nope, they are not. If only because the hope for "privacy" is still based on the claims of the makers and sellers. Just like it is for all other computer systems: no manufacturer would admit to be spying on their users. Certainly not in hardware.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Unless I'm completely wrong here, that machine is too expensive for it's specs.
And it strikes me as really disturbing when a machine with all free software is more expensive than the same machine without free software.
Would be 'yes' *if* the alternative were so horrible.
On open source firmware, it just doesn't matter that much. I work in designing systems and particularly firmware. BIOS/UEFI isn't even that theoretically interesting in terms of where to inject any sort of privacy invading facility when you are designing all the firmware and hardware. There are a lot more robust and harder to detect vectors in the entirety of the hardware design than is ever possible in firmware. You can't argue that coreboot versus UEFI versus BIOS versus openfirmware choice by itself guards against malware getting into firmware. Regardless of implementation, if it doesn't include something like a staging area with firmware signature validation while effectively preventing direct writes from OS, then a malware implementation could get at it.
On 'freedom', BIOS and UEFI both have about as much as people really care about. SecureBoot has been conflated with 'all proprietary firmware' and particularly UEFI, but it just isn't a hard aspect of UEFI. I have seen people with secureboot *incapable* systems say "we want to install in BIOS mode because of SecureBoot'. SecureBoot is a completely useless and annoying piece of crap, true, but it isn't restricting freedom compared to genral BIOS vendors.
And to the SecureBoot defenders saying it can prevent some things as they exist today, I call it out as a failure because sidestepping it is trivial (get a linux loader, kexec your way to root kit of operating system of your choice). A system where OS installer could take ownership of TPM and have firmware validate based on OS installer choice of trust rather than some fixed trust root would have been tons more effective (MS could then assure *only* ms software comes after without manual reset of firmware root of trust, and so could redhat and canonical and so on without any vendor having to vouch for another vendor's content) and less controversial (don't like it, use an OS that never sets key in first place, if you buy some windows preinstalled, then you'll have to go into firmware config menu once and be done with it)..
a refurbished 2006 ThinkPad X60 with single or dual-core Intel CPU, 1GB+ of RAM, 60GB+ HDD, 1024x768 12.1-inch screen while costing $320+ USD
Seriously? This won't even surf the awful modern web well... Sure it's fine for lynx or a cron that pulls websites as text like RMS uses but... the rest of us might wanna use Chromium.
> no understanding of the importances of "just works"
That's not their part of the job.
Various entities can label something as user-friendly. FSF is pretty much the only entity that can label stuff as free.
This is one laptop. Hopefully next year there'll be twenty, and then someone can take on the job of announcing which is the most user-friendly of the twenty free laptops.
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Are these outdated specs worth your privacy and freedom?
No - but the Market will ultimately decide that.
Linux finally won! Why isn't Android "Truly Free"?
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
The version of Coreboot is used has been substantially modified so as to remove all optional firmware and microcode updates from the source code. The certified version of the source and binary can be found here, http://ryf.fsf.org/
I paid $200 for a Thinkpad T60 refurb (yes, a refurb, but you know, it hasn't faltered once). Comparable specs, faster CPU, less money. Not to mention this still isn't open hardware. I did have to strip whichever version of Windows came with it (didn't even look) and replace it with Debian, but it's been a quite a fine machine for work. (Programming, which doesn't exactly require a beast of a machine most of the time. Wowie! Look at that text editor go!)
Yeah, RMS goes w/ Loongson, so since the FSF is putting this together, why don't they just team up w/ Lemote, slap Trisquel (or gNewSense) on the laptop, fire it up w/ GNOME3, and put it out to market? Better yet, if they can find someone to fab the OpenRISC chip, or come out w/ an GPLed version of a SPARC (where its HDL designs are GPLed) and fab it, and design it into a laptop, w/ coreboot, they'll get what they want.
Remember, for an FSF endorsement, it doesn't need to be good, or even run end user software. It just needs to 'respect your freedom & privacy', so the solution above should do it.
When we can we download the plans so I can use my Makerbot to 3D print a fully functional laptop? It won't fit so I'll print it half-size, or maybe in two passes and glue it together?
to FSF website announce? Phoronix can not be the primary reference.
... in 2008.
> Is the harddrive running open-source firmware too?
A disingenuous double attack.
First: "Since I can't be perfect, why should I make any effort at all?"
Second: "FSF is has compromised! that makes them insincere"
The answer is that no, the hd firmware isn't open. Like the firmware of a microwave or common wristwatch, it's probably impossible to put new firmware on it, and it's probably not a problem.
A line has to be drawn somewhere, so FSF's line is: if the software (including firmware) can be updated, it must be free. The philosophy is that if it's complex or important, then the vendor will create a way to update the firmware. If the firmware can't be updated, then the code is probably sufficiently mundane as to be ignored, just as circuits are ignored.
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It may not be the best value, most up to date laptop available (Which Linux laptop is these days?) but this is a significant milestone and a working example of an affordable, truly open and free laptop. It wouldn't take much for security conscious organisations, e.g. businesses, govts., NGOs, journalists, political parties, and activists, to take this from being a tiny minority interest to something more widespread and therefore cost effective (economies of scale).
I had an X60 until about last year and it ran fine as my second backup laptop. Ran Ubuntu just fine, though Vista was very slow on it. It does not have a DVD player built in, but mine had an external one. I guess this one would work fine for browsing or even light s/w development.
But that said, I think the image and description matches Lenovo T60, which was a normal laptop. X60 was a tablet with a stylus. I never got that to work properly on Ubuntu, so I am not sure how these guys managed it.
There has to be a benefit somewhere. Most people don't just shell out money for their principles, and especially not something as vague and terrifying as freedom. There's perceived value in using Linux (no Microsoft lock-in, potential security issues, etc.), but if that means having to give up watching Netflix, then people will choose Netflix and buy a Windows or Apple machine.
There's a market for truly secure though. There's a very big market in fact.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
People who use an OpenMoko will love this.
There's something to be said for what the FSF is trying to do. The problem is that they're too slow in doing it.
What about the microcode running on the CPU?
What about the firmware on the various integrated peripherals, like the keyboard, hard drive, etc?
dropped it a few times it still works fine
That's not their part of the job.
Maybe not. But a group that can't see other important issues because of one issue that they own is jeapordizing its own relevancy to the rest of society. That's fundamentalism in a nutshell.
We should learn what we need to know about issues, before we decide what we need to feel about them.
That's a definition of fundamentalism, it certainly isn't the definition of fundamentalism that is common short-hand for extremist asshole. The FSF does not qualify for the extremist asshole definition, not by a long shot.
Many HD/SSD firmwares can be updated. As they do not list the exact model, I cannot confirm if the ones they are using have firmware updates available (but it's likely, especially in the case of SSDs).
The hardware is perfectly usable for basic stuff, but it's absurdly expensive! That hardware costs about $100-$120 refurbished.
I don't respond to AC's.
Is there a Hurd installer?
> Is the harddrive running open-source firmware too?
A disingenuous double attack.
First: "Since I can't be perfect, why should I make any effort at all?"
The article says:
The free software operating system preloaded on the refurbished X60 is Trisquel GNU/Linux, the Ubuntu derivative backed by the FSF that ships without any proprietary software or firmware options.
So tell me again who is being disingenous?
Second: "FSF is has compromised! that makes them insincere"
The answer is that no, the hd firmware isn't open. Like the firmware of a microwave or common wristwatch, it's probably impossible to put new firmware on it, and it's probably not a problem.
A line has to be drawn somewhere, so FSF's line is: if the software (including firmware) can be updated, it must be free. The philosophy is that if it's complex or important, then the vendor will create a way to update the firmware. If the firmware can't be updated, then the code is probably sufficiently mundane as to be ignored, just as circuits are ignored.
Why say it has "no proprietary firmware" when it clearly does?
Firmware is available for many (most?) hard drives. I'm not sure why that makes it difference -- if that particular laptop didn't allow BIOS updates, would it be ok to advertise it as not having proprietary firmware? Is it somehow better that not only is the firmware no accessible in the hard drive, but the entire API is secret so you have no idea what it's doing? Maybe it scans the hard drive at night looking for your secret data and it uses its DMA access to poke that data into operating system TCP buffers. Any device with DMA access can be a security threat.
And why do you keep saying probably? If there's a chance that proprietary firmware could be a problem, then shouldn't they tell me that?
The lesson is: never try. If something's hard to do, then it's not worth doing. You just stick that laptop in the closet next to your shortwave radio your karate outfit and your unicycle and we'll go inside and watch TV. What's on you ask? It just doesn't matter.
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
You're right, next year we'll also have a Thinkpad T21 running Linux, for the low price of $250.
I have a Lenovo Thinkpad X60 that I've used for several years as a drawing tablet. (I assume the models being sold for this are without the very-proprietary patented Wacom digitizer). The swivel hinges don't hold up too well to abuse (I've had to do a "hip replacement" on mine), but it's otherwise a good piece of hardware for its day.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
I wonder if ackthpt is trying to mention the script trap (see previous Slashdot discussion). Most graphical web browsers default to automatically downloading and running non-free programs inside web pages.
I thought the lesson was: If at first you don't succeed, try, and try again? No wonder we're so screwed, what with sheeple like you.
This laptop contains proprietary Intel chips. We know that hardware makers like Intel have colluded with governments to insert undocumented die-level and firmware level "features" into their products that could serve as backdoors and otherwise weaken the device's security against sophisticated attackers.
Where is the open source, audited CPU? Ethernet controller firmware? Wireless firmware? Microcode updates?
Not worth it.
This will fail miserably.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
You can all use this while riding through town on your unicycle and waxing your mustache. Single core? 1 GB? With those specs, the only people that will use this are the people that want it as a glowing example of how they are different from those around them. Hipsters.
... but people like Glenn Greenwald might want something like this: a machine that has at least some attempt made to make the software transparent. The target audience is the paranoid.
Sure, it may not be perfect (keyboard firmware, etc.).
Is the processor running free microcode?
Also, did they really code their own SMC bios? I find that hard to believe.
Please help metamoderate.
haha, someone modded my two comments down because they disagree.
I guess they want FSF to do everything and hand it to them on a plate, free, user-friendly, zero cost.
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CNET posted a review of the X60 in March 2006. Lenovo ThinkPad X60s The release date for this "ultraportable," February 14. This is for all practical purposes an eight or nine year old machine.
I am comfortable buying refurbished.
But nothing this old --- and never without a warranty, however short-lived.
I don't see the point in this. You want to get away from commercialised products, essentially, and show how wonderful your code is and the freedom you get, but then you're limited to pathetic systems. It basically comes down to a balance that NOBODY wants - you can either browse websites that are out there today, cheaply, or you can have a computer based on Open Source code, or some variation in between.
If the FSF really want to do something useful, they should start with something smaller. The RPi, for instance, still has a shedload of closed-source crap but because it boots from SD-card (so no "BIOS" to worry about at all), it can actually be open-source AND useful if you want to help it be so.
And then once you have that, you can make a "Free" tablet. It's not that hard, it's the RPi, essentially, with a large built-in display (and given that the display and the 3D processing are the largest parts of the non-open devices of the RPi and other similar ARM chips, this is a good place to start from an established base).
Once you have a tablet, you are into real "usable" computers that can be audited. And laptops / netbooks are only a step away, as the recent trend for Windows laptops which are basically tablets with keyboards attached has shown. And then you can move towards laptops.
The technology is there, but only running on some ancient piece of crap makes it look awful.
Wake up, FSF. Put up a Kickstarter for a truly "open" ARM-based (because ARM will let you see if their chips are doing anything dodgy) tablet/cometputer and see what happens. And then you don't start from some brain-dead Windows-based commercial monstrosity with pathetic ACPI tables that you have to Coreboot to make it work properly.
If you want to show off open-source, do it using its strengths - the fact that you can build from the ground up on even the cheapest of hardware, chop and change between hardware modules at will, etc. - and stop pumping out refurbished crap and expecting people to buy it / use it just BECAUSE it's open.
> no understanding of the importances of "just works"
That's not their part of the job.
Various entities can label something as user-friendly. FSF is pretty much the only entity that can label stuff as free.
This is one laptop. Hopefully next year there'll be twenty, and then someone can take on the job of announcing which is the most user-friendly of the twenty free laptops.
I'd take issue with them nominating themselves as the one true source, but that's neither here nor there. The real question is whether people will be willing to pay exorbant prices for relatively ancient hardware on the grounds that it very slightly increases the amount of "freedom" they have. Given that 99.95% of people will have no idea what this is about and further wouldn't care if they did (as we're talking about an increase that is difficult if not impossible to measure and arguably doesn't exist) I wouldn't hold your breath on this becoming anything more than an isolated instance.
In short, unless one can prove that even a tiny percentage of computer BIOSes and the like are phoning home or contacting the NSA with daily activity reports exactly no one, on the grand scale, will care. It reminds me of all the efforts to create a "free" CPUs or graphics cards in the past. Sure, you could do it and have them as long as you're okay with 10 or 15 year old technology that is incapable of doing anything that is currently useful. But it's Free! :D
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
Well that's a little different, a registered user trolling an AC! What's next, cats chasing dogs?
Really, if you go and install only debian main, what can't you do?
So I've got one person replying to me saying FSF is too "fundamentalist", and I've got you saying they're too lax and are letting too much slip through.
The general theme is that some people will look for even the smallest error just to avoid acknowledging good work.
Why do I say "probably" in my previous post? Because you and I don't know what the firmware in our microwaves do. It's probably fine. There haven't been any big microwave firmware scandals that I'm aware of. (And if I didn't say "probably", you'd say "How can you know?!")
Regarding FSF's statement, they said "no proprietary firmware options". Options. Whatever firmware could be removed has been removed.
Is the HDD firmware a problem? I don't know. I don't know personally, and I don't know what FSF's take on it is.
But even if you did find some flaw, the right thing to do is say "Well, FSF is definitely 95%, and well done to them for their effort, but I'd like some discussion on this other 5%".
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"Asshole?" No. "Extremist?" I'd say so. (But that's a feature, not a bug!)
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
> I'd take issue with them nominating themselves as the one true source
Who else would you trust? Their self-nomination only works because it's not really contested. Even if some support is given begrudgingly, and not everyone likes every campaign or press release, there is general acceptance that their motives are pure.
But more importantly, I don't think there's reason to be so pessimistic. In 1995 they said we'd never have a decent GUI desktop. In 1997, they said we'd never have a free web browser. Then they said we'd never have a free office suite. Then they said we'd never have specialised applications like video editors...
The trend I see, is that we keep surprising ourselves with how far we're getting. There's room for optimism here!
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Are these outdated specs worth your privacy and freedom?"
Having one of these won't assure you of either freedom or privacy. Hell, I doubt that it's even possible to have any sort of internet presence these days that would not be snooped, analysed, spamed or copied. So I can't really see the point to extolling privacy as a software attribute - when there are so many leaky stages after your stuff leaves whatever hardware you're using: free or not.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
I actually bought one of these laptops used on fleaBay two years ago. I'm currently running Arch and Fluxbox (yeah yeah I know...) on it and it's snappy as hell. Takes all of 2 seconds for my desktop to come up, and I've dropped the thing on concrete from four feet up TWICE and it still works flawlessly (besides a few dings here and there). It runs everything I throw at it fairly flawlessly, but then again I don't game or do anything like that.
If you need a text editor for Emacs, try using Viper mode, which emulates the vi family.
Games with more graphical complexity than (say) Go or Chess are one thing that tends to be missing from purist free operating systems for reasons I've described elsewhere. So is connecting to the Internet if there's no free driver for your NIC.
This is a 7 year old laptop - and while someone may have replaced all the batteries with new ones, dismantled it and cleaned the internals with an air duster, and cleaned up the case it's still a diverted piece of e-waste.
Charging people $320 for something that probably cost them less than $50 to acquire is gouging - especially when people have problems with them.
OpenSPARC is a spec - is there an actual CPU by that name, the way there is OpenRISC?
Instead of needing to manufacture a new laptop, simply "refurbish" an existing model and [measure] your target market.
Anonymous Coward made a pun between the word used for "measure" and a word that means "economically exploit":
You meant to type gouge, I'm sure.
I see your joke, but sometimes there's a good reason to put a prototype into limited production for early adopters. See "Test market" on Wikipedia.
An automated install of some free software (they didn't develop) is hardly worth charging 300 dollars for.
The advantage of a preinstall is that drivers are guaranteed to work.
Scientology gives people total freedom
I don't see how being forbidden to share scripture with the public counts as "total freedom".
And it strikes me as really disturbing when a machine with all free software is more expensive than the same machine without free software.
On a PC that comes with Windows, the fees that trialware developers pay PC makers to get their non-free trialware preinstalled is believed to exceed the price of a non-free OS license.
A long time ago (like, 1994), on the linuxnet irc network, there was this guy named _Joe_ that claimed he was going to build boards around the Dec Alpha chip that would be dedicated Linux workstations.
We were all salivating.
So far as I know, it never happened, (sadly).
But I always wondered about it -- in the early days of Linux, most of the people working on it were used to using proprietary unix hardware with proprietary unixes. We were clearly willing to use non-windows compatible hardware if it made sense.
It's somewhat surprising to me that "designed for Linux" workstations aren't more popular. On the low end, you have things like the Pi, but that's not necessarily setup to be a general purpose workstation. On the high end, you have the older Silicon Graphics big iron that was designed for Linux. Not really "normal workstation" material, and not by any means open hardware/software.
I guess what I am curious about is that given the level of talent in the F/OSS community, why there doesn't seem to be a clear market participant that builds "Linux compliant" workstations and servers, including preferring chipsets that have open hardware and open firmware. And why isn't there an industry around designing those open cores and writing firmware for them?
Being a fabless hardware company is easier than ever; where's the open source hardware platform that I _know_ doesn't have strange reliability issues (like the random MSI board I bought a few years back), doesn't leak RF/audio all over the place (like the Packard Bell my friend grew up with), and has 100% of its hardware well supported by in-box kernel drivers?
The last few motherboards I've purchased from Newegg have all had subtle defects with them. I'd rather pay a bit more for a board where I knew that the people behind it weren't looking to cut costs but were instead looking to make a product they'd be happy to depend on day-in and day-out, and that part of that guarantee was that the board was widely used by the community and was made of open components that didn't have obsolescence designed in.
That organization or those products may exist already, but its hard to tell who is selling a Rolls Royce vs. who is selling a lemon. If you go by reviews from places like Newegg, there isn't necessarily a correlation between brand and quality or price and quality.
Does anyone have suggestions?
(As an aside, I'm happy with the Raspberry Pi I bought. But it's clearly not a workstation replacement. Similarly, I'm happy with the Alix PCEngine I bought years ago to run my openBSD edge device. That custom hardware has worked very, very well. But it's not a general purpose workstation either)
I guess my contention is that while I cannot afford SGI prices, I can (and will) pay more for something that I have a reasonable assurance of getting strong community support for. Who wants my money? :)
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
The specs likely are more than enough for many people who browse or check emails etc..
Of course the way websites start loading up their advertizing spews ontop of their actual content will continue to increase and sap increasing amounts of performance.
Generic Linux installation disks might go most of the way to do the same thing (with most 'used' laptops), but the hardware drivers issue...
Considering how long we've been hearing RMS saying "this is as close to Totally Free as you can get", if the FSF is really calling this "Truly Free", then yes, I expect it to be totally and utterly free. Granted, that is hard if not impossible to pull off, yes.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
The word asshole in your definition is more of a connotation. It's not actually in the definition of the word.
br> The word fundamentalism doesn't mean evil, bad or asshole. It just means that you are zealous about your cause in such a way that you that puts you out of step with the world around you.
I felt that promoting an over-priced laptop made of 7 year old hardware, only because it meets qualified for that meaning of the word. But I apologize if some felt that word was harsh. I'd thought it was well-chosen.
We should learn what we need to know about issues, before we decide what we need to feel about them.
While having a powerful desktop for main computing (as I'm a developer), my old Athlon XP 3GHz and 3GRam still cuts their way on common cotidianous tasks.
You *DON'T* need a octa-core processor with 16G Ram for browsing the web, god damnit!
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
Actually, I'm sitting in front of a ThinkPad x60 that I salvaged off the to-be-decommissioned pallet at work. I maxed out the RAM, stuck in a 500GB HDD, bought a new battery and installed Linux. It runs plenty fast for a 6-year-old machine. It's not exactly slim, but it's a useful workhorse sitting here next to my Haswell MacBook Air.
Am I weird? (Don't answer that.) I just don't like tossing useful hardware. And with Linux, many an obsolete box can be reclaimed as useful hardware.
> And none of those things were done by the FSF itself.
We have a GUI desktop because FSF launched four projects to make one.
The first became GNUstep (a success, but not enoughso), the second didn't produce a desktop but did produce Guile.
Then KDE was launched, with the then-proprietary QT toolkit. The problem was so urgent that FSF launched two projects to fix it, GNOME and Harmony. Harmony was a project to replace the QT toolkit, but it wasn't a success.
GNOME was a success. So much of a success that it was, IMO, what lead to QT being freed. So we've FSF to thank for directly making GNOME, and indirectly for licence changes in QT.
(And then there's the fact that FSF made the developer tools and licences which helped a lot of other projects come into being.)
But as usual, people try to avoid crediting FSF, so a lot of people don't know this.
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Then KDE was launched, with the then-proprietary QT toolkit. The problem was so urgent that FSF launched two projects to fix it, GNOME and Harmony. Harmony was a project to replace the QT toolkit, but it wasn't a success.
Gnome wasn't started by the FSF itself, but by Miguel de Icaza While it has a recursive name referencing GNU it' isn't one of their projects. It uses the GTK tookit, which was created by a university, University of California at Berkeley, not the FSF. Besides, the Nautilus file manager was developed by a for-profit company called Eazel...look it up:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eazel
Another for profit company founded by Icaza, Helix/Ximian also did much work on GNOME
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ximian
GNOME was a success. So much of a success that it was, IMO, what lead to QT being freed. So we've FSF to thank for directly making GNOME, and indirectly for licence changes in QT.
That must be why in 2009, RMS called Miguel de Icaza a "Traitor to the Free Software Community"
But as usual, people try to avoid crediting FSF, so a lot of people don't know this.
Yes, the FSF and GNU project deserves some credit, for creating the tools, but beyond that...just beause those tools are used to create other things, doesn't mean we should kowtow to Stallman for every thing made using those tools.
GNOME was launched by FSF and RMS spent years promoting it and getting people to work on it. He still does.
You seem to be trying to make GNU disappear by arguing that nothing matters but lines of code, and only the lines written by RMS's hands count as GNU.
The toolkit is a GNU project, born from another GNU project.
Miguel de Icaza was one developer and software architect. He did years of good work and then gave up and took money to promote Microsoft software (via Novell).
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Uhh.... you get privacy and freedom on modern spec computers so ..... your question makes no sense.
Seriously, nobody cares.
If you do, you are part of the 0.00001%
How do these machines enhance my freedom exactly? In case I want to chide the bios? Oh yeah, I've been planning to do that all year.
They removed patented software and firmware? Great, outdated Wi-Fi and no movies.
Patents are bad and open source software is good, but this is just silly.
What's so wrong with installing linux on a real laptop?
Modern laptops come with remote administration tools built into the chips on the board. (The vendors tout this as a feature, simplifying administration of a large company's workstations. It's easier and cheaper to build it into everything than to be selective, so it's in the machines sold to individuals, too.)
One example: Intel Active Management Technology (AMT) and its standard Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI), the latter standardized in 1998 and supported by "over 200 hardware vendors". This is built into the northbridge (or, in early models, the Ethernet) chip).
Just TRY to get a "modern laptop" (or desktop), using an Intel chipset, without this feature. (I suspect the old Thinkpad is how far back they had to go to avoid it.)
You can't disable it: Dumping the credentials or reverting to factory settings just makes it think it hasn't been configured yet and accept the first connection (ethernet or WiFi, whether powered up or down) claiming to be the new owner's sysadmins.
If the NSA doesn't know how to use this to spy on, or take over, a target computer, they aren't doing their jobs.
Some of the things this can do (from the Wikipedia articles - see them for the footnotes):
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
That will run backtrack just fine.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
If the laptop is free, then why does it cost $320?? I'm confused.
Not because of the freedom in itself, but because the only time free software compromises quality is when it wants to keep its freedom*. Commercial software is full of compromises to shift the direction of the software to another area (for example google compromising the quality of its products to improve google+ market share), free software has no such things.
Although you can argue that commercial interest drives many free software projects, the freedom is still there to say "you screwed up and I'm taking this to another direction".
The thing I hate the most as a software developer and software user is compromising quality for the sake of something else.
Never compromise quality, that is how microsoft got the reputation it has today. They sacrificed quality in so many areas to build their monopolist empire that everybody pretty much hates them and will hate them forever. Windows 8 compromised the desktop usability to try to grab mobile marketshare. And although that seems to be working (microsoft mobile marketshare is significant), everyone hates windows 8
* For _example_ not putting Flash into linux distros to keep it free, not having Flash reduces the quality of a distro because you have to manually install it your self if you want to use it.
That must be why in 2009, RMS called Miguel de Icaza a "Traitor to the Free Software Community"
Wow! Way to cherry pick the quotes there buddy.
Sure, Miguel did many great things for Open Source in his earlier brilliant years.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_de_Icaza)
Miguel de Icaza has received the Free Software Foundation 1999 Award for the Advancement of Free Software, the MIT Technology Review Innovator of the Year Award 1999,[20] and was named one of Time magazine's 100 innovators for the new century in September 2000.
Then he signed on to the MS bandwagon advocating Microsoft technologies such as the Office Open XML (OOXML) file format and developing the abortion known as Mono. Miguel has done more to taint the Linux eco-system with potential MS patent risks then any other developer I know.
De Icaza endorsed Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) document standard, disagreeing with a lot of the widespread criticism in the open source and free software community.
He has also been a longtime advocate of using Mono - a free software implementation of Microsoft's .NET Framework - in GNOME. This has raised much disagreement due to the patents that Microsoft holds on, and related to, the .NET Framework.
For advocating Microsoft technologies, de Icaza was criticized by Richard Stallman on the Software Freedom Day 2009 as "Traitor to the Free Software Community".
In early 2010 he received a Microsoft MVP Award.
You would do well to kowtow to Stallman, or at least get your damn facts right.
This is very encouraging!
We are like *this* close to...FREE BEER!
**>>BELCH
I am aware of Icaza and Microsoft technologies, and understand the ire, but that doesn't mean that Stallman's Ideals are "Practical", or that he or the FSF doesn't need to learn how people other than former MIT grad students use computers and design good free software for THEM.
Sure, I have no love for Icaza, but I think Stallman needs a dose of computer reality.
http://www.fsf.org/news/gluglug-x60-laptop-now-certified-to-respect-your-freedom
The was RMS treated anyone who used the word "free" in asking a question certainly qualifies as arsehole but that's just one landmine to step over and move on. It got very boring after hearing it the twentieth time in interviews, just as the "linux? Never hurd of it?" joke got old after the third time in an evening when he was asked about linux.
The FSF and all the rest is thankfully a lot bigger than RMS so it's not worth focusing on a jealous guy that is annoyed that the movement he was involved in for years has got far too big for him to have any sort of major role in it any more. The two silly linux renaming attempts (LiGnuX then gnu/linux) got him some attention for a while but that has now faded.
Who would have thought that being truly free implied being severely restricted.
Gnome was not a FSF project but instead one where the founders asked for the blessing of the FSF.
Gnome was a success when the people who were interested in the politics left and the people who were interested in development made it cross-platform (absolute heresy to the founders) and usable.
So, Microsoft is jeopardizing its own relevancy to the rest of society, by not selling OSX and IOS devices, while Apple is doing the same thing by not selling Android devices?
On second thought, that's a bad example, because companies exist to earn money, and product diversity is a way to do just that. Where as an organization with a specific stated purpose, has no reason to do the exact opposite of their stated purpose. So yeah, the FSF has no reason to concern themselves with other things than free software, where as Microsoft has plenty of reasons to sell OSX and IOX devices, and Apple has plenty of reasons to sell Android devices.
Some hard drive controllers contain three cores and are able to run linux:
http://hackaday.com/2013/08/02/sprite_tm-ohm2013-talk-hacking-hard-drive-controller-chips/
Complete with a program to eavesdrop any data read from the disk.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Thanks for the link. I've noted it in the wiki that FSF hosts:
http://libreplanet.org/wiki/When_should_firmware_be_free#Hard_drive_controllers
I don't know if anyone from FSF reads that page, but I'll gather info and I'll raise it with someone in FSF next time I'm talking to them.
(Of course, this isn't the case with the drive of the laptop that FSF has endorsed.)
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
"Are these outdated specs worth your privacy and freedom?"
Hell yes! I paid £200 (the price in TFS) for my current laptop, an OLPC XO-1. It has a 433MHz processor, 256MB RAM and 1GB storage, so the system described in the summary would be a great upgrade (although I assume its screen isn't from Pixel Qi :( ). The reason I've stuck with my XO-1 for the past 4 years is that I've been ratchetting myself away from proprietary systems:
Windows+nVidia+Flash+BIOS -> Dual-boot Windows/Linux+nVidia+Flash+BIOS -> Linux+nVidia+Flash+BIOS -> Linux+Flash+BIOS -> Linux+BIOS -> Linux+OpenFirmware
Since there are so few systems as free as my XO-1, it's been difficult to find anything to switch to. I'll probably get one of these laptops :)
Now if only someone would make a phone without binary blobs, so I can upgrade from my aging OpenMoko :/
Is the firmware in devices free?
Is the processor's microcode free?
Usually in a computer there are more software than the BIOS, operating system, and applications.
True. On a sufficiently low level of abstraction, binary code is the source code. Before there was Assembly Language, there was Machine Language, and programmers programmed computers in it, encoding each machine word using nothing but a row of switches and a row of light bulbs as an "editor".
Having said that, I realized that software freedom and openness is a moving target. Once there is a technological level escalation, what was previously open, becomes obfuscated or unintelligible. Software written in arcane and deprecated programming languages or even styles, closes itself with passage of time.
Dude, if you really want to go into 1-dimensional left-right political thinking, then radical libertarianism is commonly associated with the political right - at least in the US, where RMS happens to have been born, raised, and spent most of his life. Also, there are better examples of leftists rags than the centre-left Guardian, the news coverage of which is *relatively* fair an balanced, especially compared to a lot of American media (though it's still not my first choice). That last sentence of yours is a pure troll.
In my example, Libertarian was Right & Green was Left. I was not picking either side, nor opining which one was correct. Each side has a purist utopian outlook to the direction the country should be headed, and my point was that if that utopian outlook was convincing, these 2 would be mainstream parties.
As for my last statement, the #3 party in the US is a toss-up competition (depending on state) b/w the Libertarians, Greens & Constitutional Party. It's hardly a pure troll.