[Arm-netbook] System 76 - Entering Phase 3

[Bill Kontos]

No, don't worry. I don't call names on anyone. As RMS said, I'm not glad
that he died, but I'm glad that he's gone. I believe in the value of human
life above all else. It would be immoral( imo) to apply crude logic to
this. I do not celebrate the death of any human being no matter how savage
or harmful that person might have been to humanity. And I sure won't
celebrate Linus' death because you might hate him but it won't change the
fact that we 100% rely on his work and we don't know how his death could
affect future development of linux and free drivers in general.

 I guess it is a matter of how each individual thinks: For me it makes no
sense to discuss how something will work if we can't get it to work our way
in the first place. In other words: computing will be done and programs
will be written, the question is do you want to be a part of the procedure
and help do it your way or just sit in the corner waiting for the perfect
solution to come up before you commit to it ? Because that solution might
not come. Other people are much more idealists than me. That's fine. We
need both types of people.

But before you decide to completely ignore system76 and their efforts, I
need to point out that they have indeed supplied a lot of code and have
benefited the libre hardware community in general a lot. I have been
looking at their history and various interviews of them and from what I've
gathered:

1) They have contributed code both to Ubuntu specific packages( installer,
unity) and to the kernel, that is writing DACs( as an example given) and
pushing companies for open sourcing drivers. In fact if there is one that
takes advantage of their effort it is Dell who according to Daniel Fore(
one of their employees) takes advantage of that hardware on their Xps
Developer's edition.

2) They do seem to like the cooperative nature of FOSS. At least their blog
posts do show so. System76 started as a 2 man business installing linux on
clevo laptops. Then they started expanding the range of their activities by
working on drivers and paying a lot of attention to the details. The
"purists" right now are probably thinking that the main goal is to just get
it working in a libre way, but high quality is actually important too. So
it might just be that they consider shipping a 100% libre computer that
will be useful to their demographic something out of their reach as of
right now. And when it comes to laptops it's not like they have many
choices, it's intel for the cpus and nvidia for the gpus. Amd is non
existent and arm for laptops of the class they are selling is still not a
thing.

3) They are the biggest customer of Clevo and as such their word holds a
lot of value and they do push towards making a lot of linux friendly
decisions. See this comment
https://www.reddit.com/r/System76/comments/611zf5/question_how_much_control_does_system76_have_over/


And anyway something that is not widely known: when arm netbooks started
becoming a thing OEMs were putting linux on them( of course). Microsoft saw
a very threatening market emerging and raged hell upon them that if they
kept doing this the sales of their other models would suffer due to them
removing the OEM discount on the windows license. After that they proceeded
to change the model so instead of charging per machine they charge per
model. So basically even if you buy e.g. a Dell Lattitude with Ubuntu
preinstalled and then wipe it and replace it with an FSF approved distro
YOU ARE STILL PAYING THE WINDOWS LICENSE. Now some people might disagree
with me, but for me libre software is a war against oppression and is
directly competing with microsoft etc( disagree as in that we do not
compete but exist to fulfeel our own needs). So just for this reason, if
you need to buy an x86 computer and a libreboot model is not an option it
is better to buy a system76 instead of e.g. a dell or a thinkpad and then
install gnu/linux on it.

Anyway I guess there is also another big difference for me: Some people
might think it is ok to have a binary blob e.g. on the firmware for their
wifi card as long as you don't interact with it via userland and the OS and
the applications are libre. I'm on the exact opposite position: I consider
blobs and an operating system that limit or obscure my access to hardware
to be of the most unethical nature and less so the programs themselves.
Because I have paid for the hardware but an application might come for no
cost, therefor I do not have any demands from the author of that
application. Will I run it if it's not free ? probably not. But at the end
of the day you do pay with your wallet and for that reason I am not e.g.
buying nvidia hardware, even though it's the only 100% libre gpu with 3d
accel. I don't care. I'd much rather support amd in their free driver
efforts and instead hope that someone will pick the fact that they do not
need to write any gallium3D stuff but just reverse engineer the (small)
blobs that still exist, resulting in a much easier way to write a 100%
libre driver compared to nuveau.

My point is, do I think System76 is perfect ? No. Do I like what they do ?
Yes I like it a lot. Do I think they could be more vigilant with their
interactions with other companies when it comes to free drivers ?
Absolutely. But I think it is a better solution than anything else( or at
least has been until purism dropped the ME neutralization bomb on skylake a
bit earlier). But at least give some respect to a company that started
putting gnu/linux on laptops on freaking 2005 and managed to survive and
thrive. Maybe because their choices of including some proprietary software
actually made it possible. Heck, even purism which as a company started
exactly with the purpose of selling 100% libre computers had to put up with
the intel ME for some generations until they finally found a way to disable
it. So now you can actually buy a skylake laptop that has the ME
neutralized. Maybe if they did not attempt a 'half-assed" effort first they
would never get to that point.


On Sat, Apr 22, 2017 at 5:32 PM, Lyberta <lyberta at lyberta.net> wrote:

> Bill Kontos:
> > I'm tired of all the purists that will bash every company that does a
> > step in the right direction but does not go all the way through, even
> when
> > that company was started somewhere around 2005 in a guy's basement when
> the
> > ecosystem was much less mature and they had almost no funding at all( or
> > because they call it linux and not GNU/Linux).
>
> And I'm tired of companies exploiting hard work of the GNU project and
> Free Software movement. I'm tired of the Open Source movement. I'm tired
> of Linux, I'm tired of Linus Torvalds. He puts blobs in the kernel and
> calls it acceptable. In the end we get tons of products that are
> completely unusable. Check any Android phone and you'll that it is full
> of proprietary blobs for everything, that is completely unusable without
> them.
>
> Every time you call the operating system Linux, you help Open Source
> movement. You help Google, you help Linux foundation, you help evil
> corporations. Linux was the most damaging thing that happened to the
> Free Software movement because people started mixing the terms Free
> Software and Open Source. People became unaware of 4 fundamental freedoms.
>
> I have celebrated the death of Steve Jobs and I'm going to celebrate the
> death of Linus Torvalds. And before you start calling me names, let me
> tell that I was officially declared mentally disabled. But if there is
> one good thing that my mental disability gave me, it's the inability to
> accept compromises. I value my 4 fundamental freedoms and I'm not going
> to give them away without a fight.
>
>
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