[Arm-netbook] EOMA - Open Specification?

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

On Tue, May 27, 2014 at 12:15 AM, Boris Barbour <barbour at biologie.ens.fr> wrote:

> I have to agree that Luke's argument is not great: how much expertise is
> required to say "no"?

 you're asking the wrong question.  the question that needs to be
asked, every single time, is, "does this get us towards the goal, yes
or no".  that is the only question that matters.

> And any uncertainty about hardware freedom is a valid
> concern for potential contributors.

 nobody has attempted what we are attempting, before.

 absolutely nobody.

 sure there have been some great little projects out there where
people are absolutely ecstatic if they sell 10,000 units over a 2-5
year period.

 this project is not one of those projects.


> BUT, I think we're getting rather hung up on hypotheticals here. Luke
> started the whole projet to get mass-produced hardware that runs free
> software natively, respecting the GPL. He's put a huge amount of effort into
> that, trying many different avenues to progress. Such hardware would be
> great, even in the unlikely that the it were restricted in some way.

 it would need to be an extreme situation for me to even *remotely*
consider adding in restrictions that compromised software freedom.
i'm not sure i could even consider it at all.

 i actually don't understand why people don't understand that the goal
is very very simple.  combine.  free.  software.  and. mass-volume.
factories.

 anything that gets towards that goal is in.

 anything that aggravates that goal is out.


> Imagine
> if Samsung sold a totally unlocked chromebook with proper GPL drivers for
> everything. We'd all be thrilled.

 exactly.

 the control over the samsung product range for example comes from
people who are in bed with those people who peddle DRM.   those people
who peddle DRM tell samsung (for example) "we will buy your product if
and only if you lock it down".

 they also are shit-scared about product returns, so they lock it down
so that they are in total control of the device from the bootloader
onwards.  we have a different strategy in place (a very simple one) to
deal with product returns: one that DOES NOT use DRM.