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15 Devices (Including 6 Laptops) Awarded FSF's 'Respects Your Freedom' Certification (fsf.org)
This week the Free Software Foundation awarded its coveted 'Respects Your Freedom' certification to 15 products -- more than doubling the number of certified products (from 12 to 27) since the program began in 2012.
An anonymous reader writes:
The non-profit FSF certified six different laptops, two docking stations, three WiFi USB adapters and two internal WiFi devices, a mainboard, and their first-ever certified Bluetooth device, the TET-BT4 USB adapter.
The products are all from Technoethical (formerly Tehnoetic), a Romania-based company who previously had just one mini wireless USB adapter on their list of FSF-certified products. "In 2014 we started selling hardware compatible with fully free systems in order to fund the free software activism work that we've been doing with our foundation," said Technoethical founder, Tiberiu C. Turbureanu. "Since then, we worked hard to build a hardware catalog that allows free software users to choose what best fits their computing needs, while also helping with the funding of different free software projects."
"We are excited that Technoethical has brought out such an impressive collection of hardware whose associated software respects user freedom," said the FSF's executive director, John Sullivan. "RYF certification continues to gain speed and momentum, thanks to companies like them."
"We are excited that Technoethical has brought out such an impressive collection of hardware whose associated software respects user freedom," said the FSF's executive director, John Sullivan. "RYF certification continues to gain speed and momentum, thanks to companies like them."
Unless you have time to examine lots of source code and create your own distribution of Linux, you're at the mercy of the developers who create and distribute the software you use. Those developers generally don't care about the best interests of users. If they did, they would not make changes such as systemd that harm users. They wouldn't remove proprietary software such as video drivers from their distributions in favor of inferior open source alternatives that lack performance. They would place users ahead of their petty arguments that often lead to projects being forked. Of course, open source isn't actually about freedom. It's designed as propaganda to promote an agenda against commercial software companies that don't release their source code and give products away for free. But open source isn't practically about freedom because you either have to choose small distributions with very limited manpower to provide software updates or are at the mercy of large distributions like Ubuntu, RHEL, and Debian. In reality, open source really doesn't give users any more freedom than closed source software. However, because you're not giving the developers your money, they really don't care about users. Freedom my ass.