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Stallman's Legacy Halts At Hardware (hackaday.com)
szczys writes: To say Richard Stallman had a profound effect on free software is not a bold enough statement. The power of the GPL, and his advocacy for software freedom have changed the world. But there is one frontier that has yet to hear this gospel. These days, no hardware is an island. Almost every type of electronics we use is running some type of code, and in almost every case some of that code is secret in more ways than one. From beefy processors to graphics controllers, boot ROMs and binary blobs run in the silicon we base our systems upon. The code is not published and in the rare case that you are able to view the source it is only under strict NDA. This represents one of the biggest barriers to true open hardware.
Stallman has always had the right idea IMHO, but that 'ideal' put up against Corp Profit will never win sadly.
"Those who don't understand code, will be owned by those who do"
I'm all for a hardware manufacturer who creates and promotes 100% open hardware with public code provided.....................know any?
His legacy also stopped at bathing as well.
The biggest barrier to true open hardware is the fact someone has to pay for a tangible good, and that tangible good - hardware - is designed for a specific purpose. The BIOS and bootloaders and such are immaterial, and do not limit you from using a piece of silicon as you desire. The block is silicon that does what you want to do in the first place. And that carries with it costs beyond just software creation.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
When you start missing the days when every piece of hardware you bought came with schematics and firmware listings, instead of six page license agreement printed in four point fonts and written in incomprehensible legaless (and indeed, demanding adherence to reprehensible terms.)
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
I think patents are why this can never work.
Pretty much EVERY industrial process is patented by someone. That patent is guarded by a corporation who wants to ensure they get paid ... either through sales, or licensing the patent.
IBM makes a zillion patent applications every year.
There's simply no way you can bypass the sheer quantity of "intellectual property" which encumbers the world. And since pretty much every aspect of the hardware is probably covered under a patent, you're not going to get it.
Hell, even with software, Microsoft used to insinuate that Linux violated a bunch of their patents, but wouldn't ever name them.
The modern world has been structured to serve the needs to greedy corporations. They're not going to allow you to sufficiently change the rules of the game to take that away.
Which is why every treaty these days is having the intellectual property pushed even harder, because governments are on the payroll of entities which want to further entrench their rights as superseding ours.
Keep dreaming.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Nothing is stopping you making and using your own hardware, rather than putting expectations on other peoples products. Of course, making your own hardware isnt cheap or trivial, whereas putting expectations on other people is both of those things.
Source: e-mail exchange with him, based on my shmoocon presentation on hacking USB flash drives.
In short: I said there's no way you can have open source firmware for a proprietary undocumented ASIC, that has to keep track with new developments in flash memory every 3 months.
He want on to ask if there was a way to buy a USB flash drive that wasn't field-reprogrammable, or to "convince a company to make USBs [sic] that way". I'm not aware of any, and it's impossible as-is to A) ask a vendor "What chips are you using?" and B) have the vendor use the same controller/flash chips on the same device.
Dude wouldn't listen, and I gave up trying to educate him.
da w00t. mtfnpy?
The big problem is security. There are too many places for exploitable bugs, deliberate back doors, key loggers, side channels and other forms of pwnware to hide in modern processors. Do you know where all the components in your PC were fabricated?
How was it a "right" idea? The society — and generations of programmers — were spending considerable efforts on software, which could not be used by all. This caused a substantial duplication of efforts and repulsed a substantial body of programmers, who preferred the truly free BSD-license instead. Instead of cooperating, people and groups ended up competing. And when the original GPL proved to not be "enough" — for example, it was still possible to use GPL2-licensed gcc in a BSD-project, Stallman doubled down with GPL3, forcing FreeBSD, for example, to switch from gcc to BSD-licensed clang.
Yep, these denunciations of "profit" is the very core of the problem. Generations of young idiots do not realize, that profit is simply a reward for doing something people want. There is nothing wrong or shameful about it and all efforts to "fight" it are misguided and destructive.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Uhhh...no, it's not the most popular:
https://www.blackducksoftware.com/resources/data/top-20-open-source-licenses
And no, it's not growing:
http://osswatch.jiscinvolve.org/wp/files/2015/02/figure2.png
It's not freedom that in todays society we are not free to kill anyone we want, or take anything we want from anyone else...
Sometimes you have to give up freedoms which would allow you to harm others, and thats what the GPL does... You are given a limited set of freedoms by the GPL, and the primary limitation is that you must grant the same level of freedom to anyone else, you're not free to limit someone else's use of the software.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
From beefy processors to graphics controllers, boot ROMs and binary blobs run in the silicon we base our systems upon. The code is not published and in the rare case that you are able to view the source it is only under strict NDA. This represents one of the biggest barriers to true open hardware.
this is incorrect! the giant barrier that prevents people from having true open hardware is the obscene cost of having your design made into a silicon chip. if you could suddenly get a one-off chip made for $100, we would all be running much different systems and few of them would be related to x86.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Nothing in the GPL forces you to contribute back changes. You can download GPL'd code, change it however you want, and use it on your own systems to your heart's desire, without having to contribute anything.
However, if you download GPL'd code, modify it, and distribute a binary, you must distribute your code changes under the GPL. If you don't want to do that, write your own damn code from scratch. None of this is forced upon you.
I respect what Stallman has contributed to free software, but at the same time, his views are ridiculous. He is to FLOSS what fundamentalists are to religion. His untenable ideals and overwrought goals drive people away, and do more to hurt the more reasonable open source options than to help free software.
Without the GPL we wouldn't have much of the freedom we now enjoy. Would Linux be so popular, would it get as much contribution from private companies if they were able to release their own proprietary versions? Look at BSD. It doesn't benefit much from Sony using it on their games consoles and in their smart TVs, because they don't have to give anything back.
Without GPL software, software that wouldn't exist in the way it does without the GPL, we would be much more reliant on non-free products. We would be less free to compute.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The BSD and MIT licenses offer true freedom. The GPL offers restriction and the elimination of freedom.
this is a very subtle and dangerous perspective that has one extremely large software project which has ended up in complete chaos, causing headaches for many people, including misunderstandings and ignorance by vendors who assume that because the majority of the software is BSD/MIT, the linux kernel's GPL license is somehow magically transmuted to a BSD/MIT license as well.
that software is android.
the only reason why we have things like cyanogen, thank god, is because there is one last bastion of fundamental GPL code left in android devices: u-boot and the linux kernel. without that, the smartphone industry would be viewed with extreme hostility. it's *already* bad enough in cases where companies such as Mediatek blatantly and continuously violate the GPL.
look at what happened with Fairphone, for example. great product, yes? envisioned as being sustainable, yes? and after 2 years, what happened? well, there turned out to be some security vulnerabilities in the version of android that was supplied (by Mediatek). it was *critical* that the users upgrade. but, because Fairphone had naively bought a binary-only GPL-violating OS from a 3rd party OEM company that *DIDN'T EVEN HAVE THE SOURCE CODE*, there was no way to provide updates of *ANY KIND*. the buyers therefore had to abandon their products for security reasons. bear in mind that this is supposed to be eco-conscious *sustainable* hardware that's supposed to be re-usable. it was extremely embarrassing for Fairphone, and a very hard lesson for them.
so that's even when there's a GPL kernel. imagine what it would be like - imagine the situation if the linux kernel *wasn't* GPL? you would end up with the exact same situation as with apple. apple _used_ to release the kernel source code (based on FreeBSD) back to the community... they stopped recently. the end result: people no longer actually own their own hardware.
the GPL is, at its heart, a recognition that collaboration is better than competition and secrecy. the BSD and MIT licenses were developed when everybody released source code *anyway*. the licenses were therefore more about fighting the liability that is inherent in releasing code as "Public Domain". everyone *trusted* that the code modifications would be released.... and then suddenly they weren't [did you even *know* for example that Windows 95's TCP/IP stack is actually BSD-licensed?]
google's insistence on using BSD licenses - to the point of re-implementing entire GPL-based pre-existing libraries - has resulted in untold very subtle harm to end-users and to software freedom in general - harm that is very difficult to quantify and explain because it's long-term, and the consequences are ongoing.
the one thing that really really stinks about what google did with android is summed up in this simple question: they replicated dozens of critical low-level libraries and applications that had perfectly-functional GPL versions that were proven and had stable communities based around them (that could really have done with the financial support of google).... so why did they not replicate the Linux Kernel as a BSD-based project as well? that hypocrisy - that they did not also re-create the Linux Kernel as a BSD/MIT project - tells you everything that you need to know.
This reminds of labor unions claiming credit for us not working on weekends... Bullshit, in other words.
Sometimes I read a thread here and just spot the most amazing, untrue bullshit - like this line.
I've been in the office Monday through Saturday for the past 3 months - involuntarily. The project manager just had to send a simple email requesting additional resources when the goals on his timeline started slipping. HR and my direct boss walk over to me and tell me that I'm expected to be at work Monday through Saturday from 8am to 6pm. I don't get paid extra for the extra hours. I don't get comp time. I'm not allowed to use vacation days during crunch time. The contract I signed when I started here said nothing whatsoever about involuntary unpaid OT. My recourse is to find a new job (it's hard to interview on a Sunday) or initiate legal action which will end badly for me.
My neighbor is a UAW worker in a Ford plant. He gets Saturdays and Sundays off - except when they allow him to volunteer for weekend OT at 1.5x rate or even higher. I'm willing to bet his annual salary is higher than mine when you factor in his OT pay.
Please hop on the clue bus when it comes to unions. Please, I'm begging you.
The most successful GPL-program is gcc
It depends on how you define "success". I'd bet there are more Android devices running Linux than developer PCs running GCC.
BSD existed since 1970-ies.
But was it free in 1984? Wikipedia says it didn't start to become free software until 1991. And was it a complete free operating system, entirely free of AT&T encumbrances, in 1992? Once Linux was combined with what the GNU project had produced by the early 1990s, it succeeded in part because of the legal uncertainty surrounding BSD prior to the 1993 settlement.