[Arm-netbook] OT: Librem 5?

[Tor, the Marqueteur]

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On 09/25/2017 10:10 AM, Tomas Nordin wrote:
> We can stick with thinking in terms of black and white when it
> comes to whether some software is free or not. It is either free or
> it isn't. The four freedoms make that easy.
> 
> Then it can be hard on people to call them lazy by not making sure
> their machines are 100 % RYF because of convenience. But escaping
> ms office is not hard, there is not much convenience to gain there
> in place of freedom, only lock-in. On the machine side I would
> guess political activism is what is required.
> 

In some ways I agree, and in others I disagree here.  No, it isn't
always laziness to not have an RYF machine to work on.  Whether
anything, be it software, machine, or component of a machine is free
or not is a black and white issue.  A whole machine, however, or a
whole distro, also has shades of grey.

One way to think of it to pull from the software side because there
exists a better spectrum to reference, is to imagine all the OS/OS
distros lined up along an 8-bit greyscale colour bar, grading by how
much of the OS is free.  If what you care about is fully free, then
you're going to apply a threshold to that colour bar to find which
ones are a suitable option.  Nevertheless, someone running Debian or
even Ubuntu, is, when you look at the greyscale version, obviously
much closer to running free software than someone running Windows.

The same is true of machines.  As pointed out, right now there isn't
much of anything in modern-day technology for full-fledged
desktop/laptop (I believe that's actually nothing) that is fully free,
and the same for phones.  It isn't everyone who has a viable option to
use long-outdated hardware or do without a "smart" phone.  Further,
the chasm is in many cases too wide to bridge in a single leap.

Where I see the problem with Purism is that their advertising seems to
try to sound further along than they really are in supplying RYF-grade
hardware.  ThinkPenguin, on the other hand, (from whom I bought my
current laptop) appears to be providing hardware relatively similarly
far from RYF, but because they make very clear what they do and don't
have to offer, they have never to my knowledge, taken much heat for
it.  Paradoxically, if I've heard correctly, Purism has managed to
free at least one relatively recent processor from Intel's ME, quite
possibly due to the very controversy they have stirred up with their
marketing.


As for how to get more free HW, I think efforts like Talos, EOMA, and
even Purism and ThinkPenguin are the best way forward.  I wish the FSF
would do a bit more to promote upcoming hardware that can at least be
expected to be a step beyond what is currently available.  It is Talos
in particular I'm thinking of here.  When I wrote them after the close
of the Talos campaign on Crowd Supply, they indicated that the FSF
hadn't seemed very interested in working with them, and more
interested in a legislative approach.  I think this is a shame,
because that kind of approach, if successful, is only going to get a
lot of people mad at them.  Figure out how to promote open hardware so
that it ends up taking the market, and people will soon almost forget
that the world used to be different.

These are my thoughts right now, and may be worth no more than you
paid for them.

Tor


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Tor Chantara
http://www.fineartmarquetry.com/
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