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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."

15 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 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.
    2. 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...

    3. 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.

    4. 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.

    5. 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
    6. 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. 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.

  3. 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.
  4. 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.'"
  5. 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?

  6. 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