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15 Devices (Including 6 Laptops) Awarded FSF's 'Respects Your Freedom' Certification (fsf.org)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the hardware-you-can-trust dept.

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."

50 of 85 comments (clear)

  1. Coveted... by thegarbz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I don't think the author knows what this word means. The fact that only 15 devices were awarded an award that you get simply by meeting some criteria shows that the certification is not coveted at all. Quite the opposite, it shows that by-n-large people don't give a crap about it.

    1. Re:Coveted... by SvnLyrBrto · · Score: 1

      Yeah... I was abut to ask... coveted by whom?

      --
      Imagine all the people...
    2. Re:Coveted... by serviscope_minor · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It's quite remarkable: when twitter announces it's going to give people tools to block trolls and stuff they don't like, the "MAH FREEZE PEACH" crowd comes out in force declaring how it's such an awful violation of their rights to have people not listen to them.

      But when someone actually does something positve for real freedom there's just a bunch of naysayers saying how no one cares.

      Odd that, innit.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    3. Re:Coveted... by Megol · · Score: 3, Insightful

      They aren't saying that - they are pointing out the facts. So it disturbs you people can see that (almost) nobody cares about this certification? Or is it that the same people can comment that the word "coveted" isn't really correct here? Anyway it's ironic (not like rain) given the content of your post...

    4. Re:Coveted... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Sooooo as long as I remove the freedom for you to write/update the software you won't consider it proprietary. You really don't see the idiocy in that?

    5. Re:Coveted... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Look up the story of the OpenMoko. They added a separate CPU to load the firmware into the cellular modem. The product was suddenly free and more secure, although the baseband firmware could not be updated anymore should a bug be found.

    6. Re:Coveted... by epine · · Score: 1

      simply by meeting some criteria

      Colonel Klink couldn't have said it better, nor George Orwell. In the former case, Klink can't eff himself to find out. In the later case, it's guaranteed to be a movable feat.

      Splitting the difference, they once made a feature length movie about this. It was called The Right Stuff, the whole movie about a bunch of guys (fewer than fifteen that I can now recall) who "simply" met some criteria. Not much other plot. Just that.

    7. Re: Coveted... by Narcocide · · Score: 2

      Eh... some of them are less than 500$ even. And keep in mind that also includes fully maxxed-out ram banks - 8GB isn't actually bad. They pre-load libreboot too, which is a task more suited for professionals. If you can pull that off on your own and also find one of these models on ebay without a broken screen or keyboard, more power to you. I'm guessing most users will not be able to save more than 600$ of time on it though.

    8. Re:Coveted... by radarskiy · · Score: 2

      "an award that you get simply by meeting some criteria"

      Name an award that you get other than by meeting some criteria.

    9. Re: Coveted... by Trogre · · Score: 1

      Even the older ones will happily run an SSD too. Get a cheap mSATA SSD and a $2 mSATA to IDE adapter and you've cut your boot time tenfold.

      Hell, I've used one with an 8GB CF card but i don't recommend this for long-term use :)

      --
      "Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
    10. Re:Coveted... by AC-x · · Score: 1

      I think the idea is they're trying to force manufacturers to release buildable sourcecode for those loadable binary blobs to get their certification, but of course companies don't give a crap about the certification so it doesn't happen.

      But yeah it's a tricky question, as I agree with the FSF that having loadable binary blobs encourages hardware companies to stick loads of bloat in their firmware as they can release whatever buggy mess and just patch it later, but having access to a loadable firmware binary should also make it easier to reverse engineer and create tailored firmware...

    11. Re:Coveted... by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

      Whoosh.

      serviscope_minor's point was that people only seem to care about things that aren't real freedoms (the freedom to, er, force people to list to you), but when someone does something that actually protects a real freedom for them they just dismiss it.

      It's coveted by people who care about freedom. There aren't enough of them, but apparently plenty of Twitter Free Speech Warriors.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    12. Re:Coveted... by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

      The Softpedia Editor's Choice Award. Someone uploaded a text file that just said "this program does nothing at all" renamed to .exe and it still won this coveted award.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  2. technoethical by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    All products from technoethical so it reads more like an ad.

  3. Protip by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Product placements like this "story" would be more effective if they included a coupon.

    --
    #DeleteChrome
    1. Re:Protip by serviscope_minor · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Product placements like this "story" would be more effective if they included a coupon.

      So FSF awards are no longer news for nerds? I would say that what the FSF does is only of interest to nerds.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    2. Re:Protip by Megol · · Score: 1

      I'm not interested in this nor am I in love in the FSF and their ideas. While I have contributed to GPL software it isn't my favorite license as it removes freedoms compared to other licenses (but I admit the GPL makes sense in some cases).

      This obviously interest you which is good. Expecting others here to be clones of you is however unreasonable.

    3. Re:Protip by mykepredko · · Score: 1

      That was my thought, if there was any company referenced other than Tehnoetic, I might see this as a balanced article.

      --
      Mimetics Inc. Twitter
    4. Re:Protip by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

      I'm not interested in this nor am I in love in the FSF and their ideas

      Well shit. Don't read storiea about the FSF. Like it or not, though the actions of the FSF are pretty much "news for nerds".

      While I have contributed to GPL software it isn't my favorite license as it removes freedoms compared to other licenses

      Nope, the GPL only grants freedoms, not removes them. It doesn't grant as many as some licenses, but it removes none at all.

      This obviously interest you which is good. Expecting others here to be clones of you is however unreasonable.

      I don't expect people to be clones of me, but I also don't expect slashdot to be precisely all the stories I'm intrested in and none of the ones that are of interest to my general demographic but not me in particular.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    5. Re:Protip by Vairon · · Score: 1

      In your opinion, what freedoms does it remove and from whom?
      Who or what grants the freedom that it is removing?

  4. refurbished lenovo's by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The laptops are refurbished lenovo's. Overpriced, outdated crap. I am all for Free Software, but this is just getting pathetic.

    1. Re:refurbished lenovo's by johnhattan · · Score: 1

      Sheesh, the "Apple tax" is nothing compared to the "respect your privacy tax".

    2. Re:refurbished lenovo's by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      They are perfectly reasonable laptops. Decent spec, certainly enough for desktop use, nice Thinkpad keyboard, full documentation if you want to strip it down and put it back together, all parts can be ordered direct from Lenovo.

      If you want a really secure, free laptop then they are a good option. I bought one (not from them) and it's more than good enough for web, email and development. What are you expecting from it that it can't do, and why aren't you running that on a non-free workstation where being fully free doesn't really matter?

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    3. Re:refurbished lenovo's by toddestan · · Score: 1

      The Thinkpads from those generations are good machines. While Lenovo had started mucking around with them, there's still enough of the old IBM genes in them that the keyboards are still very good and overall build quality is far ahead of what you get now. While dated, throw a SSD in and max out the ram and you'll have a machine that'll run your favorite Linux distro* very well and is perfectly capable machine for many use cases (obviously not all). My Thinkpad is even older and except for gaming there really isn't anything I would need it to do that it can't actually do.

      Of course, with that said, I don't see any reason to buy a used Thinkpad from them when you can purchase them for a fraction of the cost from other sources.

      * Or Windows 10, if that's your thing.

  5. Laptops are 7 year old Lenovos by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    T400, T500, X200, etc...

    They're reselling refurbished Lenovos from 2010. This is hardly going to represent a device most people would want to own or invest in.

    1. Re:Laptops are 7 year old Lenovos by chipschap · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Old hardware is the only thing Linux runs on without problems.

      Linux is the only thing that runs on old hardware without problems.

      FTFY.

    2. Re:Laptops are 7 year old Lenovos by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

      They're reselling refurbished Lenovos from 2010. This is hardly going to represent a device most people would want to own or invest in.

      I would, but not through them. I'd follow their recipe, though.

      I'd love to have a laptop with all the basic features you'd expect like wifi and bluetooth (even if not the most fancy-pants varieties of same) which had zero closed-source binary blobs.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    3. Re:Laptops are 7 year old Lenovos by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 1

      I too, would like hardware completely missing 'binary blobs'.

      However, what about the firmware in the embedded controller in the hard drives of these laptops? What about the embedded controllers in the keyboard, the pointing device, etc.? Those all matter too. Replacing some binary blobs in the OS and the top level hardware drivers is not "turtles all the way down."

    4. Re:Laptops are 7 year old Lenovos by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 1

      I have a Windows XP laptop that I bought at a flea market a little over a year ago. It was cheap and on the price tag it said 'good, but hard drive will need to be replaced.' It had a password locked hard drive. I loaded up an ophcrack image on it, retrieved the administrator password, and logged into my 'new' used laptop.

      It had been the laptop of some lawyer. It looked like he had only used it a short while, and had only run Wordperfect for Windows on it. It was full of somebody's legal documents, etc.

      So I scrubbed all that stuff off of it, cleaned it down to a stock XP machine and did what I could to 'wipe the unallocated sectors' and whatnot.

      The only reason I mention this laptop is that it's a piece of old hardware the runs something other than Linux without problems.

      I have some older Sparc hardware that I run NetBSD on. It constitutes old hardware that runs really quite will without Linux.

    5. Re:Laptops are 7 year old Lenovos by Narcocide · · Score: 1

      That's what I was thinking, until I noticed the details say they pre-load the libreboot BIOS and max out all ram banks.

    6. Re:Laptops are 7 year old Lenovos by chipschap · · Score: 1

      I was making a hyperbolic statement (in line with the hyperbole of the OP). Yes, old hardware will run many things other than Linux, starting, I suppose, with MS-DOS and going up from there.

      My point, of course, was that Linux is "old hardware friendly" in a way that recent Windows systems decidedly are not.

    7. Re:Laptops are 7 year old Lenovos by Trogre · · Score: 1

      That's just not true.

      Linux definitively works better on Dell XPS laptops than Windows 10 does.

      --
      "Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
    8. Re:Laptops are 7 year old Lenovos by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      I wonder why they don't sell X230s? Is there some hardware in there that isn't free, like maybe the Intel Management Engine?

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    9. Re:Laptops are 7 year old Lenovos by infolation · · Score: 1

      Old hardware is the only thing Linux runs on without problems.

      Linux is the only thing that runs on old hardware without problems.

      Only Linux is supported on this libre hardware. Once they strip out the original CPU firmware and replace it with Libreboot, Windows is not supported.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... According to its own documentation, it can work with any Linux distribution that uses kernel mode setting (KMS) for the graphics, while Windows is not supported...

    10. Re:Laptops are 7 year old Lenovos by infolation · · Score: 1

      X230 cannot support Libreboot in it's current form.

      The X230 has an Intel Core i5 (3rd Gen) 3320M / 2.6 GHz CPU.

      This CPU has Embedded Security in the form of the Trusted Platform Module (TPM 1.2) Security Chip.

      'Embedded' means it's literally embedded, built into the same die as the CPU.

      On older Core2 Duo systems like the X200, the Management Engine (ME) is on a separate chip that can be accessed with a chip clamp to read and write data from/to it. When the ME is physically within the CPU, the only code it will run is code that's signed by Intel. The CPU checks the ME code at boot and if the signature doesn't match Intel's public key that's embedded into the hardware of the CPU, the CPU won't boot. There's no way around that by chip-flashing, as is possible with the older Core2 Duo designs.

    11. Re:Laptops are 7 year old Lenovos by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      Coreboot supports it: https://www.coreboot.org/Board...

      Doesn't seem too bad, similar to the X200 in terms of there being binary blog microcode and the ME. Maybe it's the GPU.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    12. Re:Laptops are 7 year old Lenovos by Trogre · · Score: 1

      Yes, I must have dreamed when I unpacked the Dell XPS laptop, ran the bundled Windows 10 for a while, watched it crash several times, constantly reject the included port replicator and generally run sluggishly.

      I must have also been dreaming when I nuked the system partition and installed Fedora, then observed all the above problems go away and the system run buttery smooth ever after.

      Anyway you can go back to your reality now, which I'm sure is a lot more comfortable for you than mine.

      --
      "Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
    13. Re:Laptops are 7 year old Lenovos by toddestan · · Score: 1

      With the X200, you can optionally remove the Intel ME, or just leave it in place. I assume for the price you're paying that they've gone to the trouble to remove the Intel ME. With the X230, you don't have a choice - you must have the Intel ME or it won't boot at all.

      I guess it boils down to just how "free" the laptop must be. If you can't accept the ME, in the long run you've now got a bit of a dilemma. You can still get by today with a Core 2 but they aren't getting any faster and you've locked yourself out of anything newer. You might be able to get something more modern by jumping over to AMD, but they've got their own version of the Intel ME in all their chips now so it's same story as with Intel.

    14. Re:Laptops are 7 year old Lenovos by tlhIngan · · Score: 1

      I too, would like hardware completely missing 'binary blobs'.

      However, what about the firmware in the embedded controller in the hard drives of these laptops? What about the embedded controllers in the keyboard, the pointing device, etc.? Those all matter too. Replacing some binary blobs in the OS and the top level hardware drivers is not "turtles all the way down."

      GNU considers "binary blobs" or firmware to count only if it has to be loaded by the OS into the device. Firmware that is contained in some non-volatile storage medium on hardware is not considered to be "non-free".

      So you can have two WiFi boards, one uses a firmware loader to load a firmware image from hard disk to it on bootup, and one that has the exact same image running from flash on the hardware. The FSF will consider the latter "free" the former not. Even though the software is identical on both.

      The big problem with 7 year old hardware is the WiFi will be pre-N, and anyone using 802.11a/g would find transfers painfully slow. The only good thing is GigE is somewhat standard by then...

  6. Re:Let's admit open source isn't about freedom by chipschap · · Score: 2

    Are you posting this same screed, word for word, in multiple discussions? Is M$ paying you?

  7. The only catch is by boudie2 · · Score: 1

    When you put it to sleep, it has to be in a coffin filled with dirt from Transylvania.

  8. Those who value SW freedom covet such HW by jbn-o · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Coveted by people who value computing in freedom, and not evaluating only by convenience and price as most computer users are taught to do. This is another example of the division between a free software activist and an open source enthusiast as the FSF pointed out years ago in a couple of essays (older essay, newer essay).

    /. is mostly filled (since years ago) by open source enthusiasts—business-first commenters for whom software freedom is never celebrated for its own sake (sometimes even chastising software freedom should someone dare to bring it up), and where any discussion of software freedom is begrudgingly tolerated only on stories where software freedom is the only way to avoid the calamity described in the story. Otherwise, evaluations come down to convenience and price with virtually no acknowledgement for how things got to be how they are.SaaS, pro-DRM are the focus (even while virtually every DRM story is about how customers are being treated badly with DRM) with discussions focusing on tinkering at the edges (DRM scheme X is not as painful as DRM scheme Y) which tacitly accepts that DRM is right and proper, and plenty of excuse-making for those in power over computer users. It's sad for those who remember that /. conversations used to be far more insightful. Fortunately there are plenty of other tech discussions around these days and /. loses its relevance as /. has long come off as just another corporate so-called "journalism" repeater site with pointers to readily-available press releases. Interesting like watching a trainwreck, but sad knowing it was better and could be better again if more people were interested in mature discussions without belittling.

    --
    Digital Citizen
    1. Re:Those who value SW freedom covet such HW by jbn-o · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I think it's a service to ship products known to work with fully-free OSes (such as the OSes the FSF points us to) right out of the box, and comes with free software installed (such as a free BIOS with no blobs). Even merely identifying which hardware will work with a fully-free system is doing us a favor; I've certainly appreciated this investigative effort for routers and desktop computers. I also think it's a service to do this with more hardware than was offered before; not just laptops but systems capable of being reasonably adequate desktop and speedy multi-core server systems which really work for many modern uses (the FSF's servers are such systems, for instance, as they show these systems can do real-world service and workstation jobs). When John Sullivan said "Users now have more options than ever when it comes to hardware they can trust" he was right. Finally, other distributors have done this before and I'm glad to see more distributors do the same even if they're distributing more of the same hardware we already knew would respect our software freedom. To say these organizations offer nothing of value strikes me as unfair to what they're offering and the work involved in providing the service commercially. Ultimately that's an example of what I explained in my parent post about eschewing software freedom for its own sake.

      It's a shame that software freedom isn't the norm: one can't be sure a free BIOS, for instance, will work on a newer system, or that the system doesn't come with backdoors advertised as sysadmin conveniences (like Intel's AMT). There's still more work to be done on software freedom, more firmware to be understood and freed, more hardware that needs free software drivers. I'm guessing that work will be done by people who do the tough investigative work and take the risks of offering liberated hardware for sale, not by those who think nothing of value has been added.

      --
      Digital Citizen
    2. Re:Those who value SW freedom covet such HW by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Coveted by people who value computing in freedom

      So it's the devices which are coveted, not the "award" itself.

      "award" in quotes due to this being the equivalent of a participation certificate in terms of how easy it would be for any technology company to actually get. ... If they cared.

    3. Re:Those who value SW freedom covet such HW by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      I sometimes wonder if this is part of a GCHQ/NSA operation to influence influential people and keep systems vulnerable and closed. Many posts could be right out of their guidelines (thanks to Snowden for leaking those).

      Or maybe it's just that the internet is getting more cynical and trolly. It's not just Slashdot, other tech communities have the same thing. Hack A Day had a huge problem with it, where every single project posted would be savaged and the person behind it trolled. They asked people to be nice and surprisingly it actually really helped.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  9. Re:Let's admit open source isn't about freedom by infolation · · Score: 1

    These machines are not certified to be 'open source', they are certified to be 'free' as defined by the FSF. Those are entirely different things.

    Practical Differences between Free Software and Open Source

    In practice, open source stands for criteria a little looser than those of free software. As far as we know, all existing released free software source code would qualify as open source. Nearly all open source software is free software, but there are exceptions. First, some open source licenses are too restrictive, so they do not qualify as free licenses. For example, 'Open Watcom' is nonfree because its license does not allow making a modified version and using it privately. Fortunately, few programs use such licenses.

    Second, and more important in practice, many products containing computers check signatures on their executable programs to block users from installing different executables; only one privileged company can make executables that can run in the device or can access its full capabilities. We call these devices "tyrants", and the practice is called "tivoization" after the product (Tivo) where we first saw it. Even if the executable is made from free source code, the users cannot run modified versions of it, so the executable is nonfree.

    The criteria for open source do not recognize this issue; they are concerned solely with the licensing of the source code. Thus, these unmodifiable executables, when made from source code such as Linux that is open source and free, are open source but not free. Many Android products contain nonfree tivoized executables of Linux.

    source: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy...

  10. Re:Let's admit open source isn't about freedom by psergiu · · Score: 1

    Here you go:
    https://opensource.apple.com/

    --
    1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
  11. Great news... a decade ago by hackel · · Score: 1

    It's just hard to swallow how far behind these machines are technically. Why can't we get a major manufacturer behind us so we can get modern components? I can sacrifice a lot of things—even the slow, dual-core CPU doesn't bother me too much—but 8 GB of RAM is is simply not doable for me. Also the low resolution of all the displays is disappointing. Is there any reason that a manufacturer couldn't take one of these models that support LibreBoot and install a new, high-res LCD panel into them? That would be better than nothing!

  12. server mobo is a bit pricey for something so dated by knope · · Score: 1

    re: https://store.vikings.net/libr... not to mention the overpriced cpus vikings is trying to hoc on your "freedom" https://www.newegg.com/Product... lol

  13. Re:Respect your Freedom from Lenovo? by infolation · · Score: 1

    So you can indeed trust that these machines don't install unwanted stuff from bios - not even if you put windows on them.

    You cannot put Windows on them. Windows is not supported by Libreboot.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] According to its own documentation, it can work with any Linux distribution that uses kernel mode setting (KMS) for the graphics, while Windows is not supported...