[Arm-netbook] What do 1,000 EOMA68-A20 PCBs look like?

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

On Thu, Dec 6, 2018 at 4:58 PM Paul Boddie <paul at boddie.org.uk> wrote:

> Discussion can be had about the FSF criteria, of course, but since Luke is
> actually seeking such endorsement, the only thing that might be helpful for
> him is to indicate to him that various FSF concerns are now addressed in the
> more mainstream distributions, such as there not being random firmware
> binaries in kernel packages, and so on.

 the RYF Criteria are extremely specific: it's not enough to have a non-free
 section that's "disabled", it must be *not possible* for an average end-user
 to *accidentally* end up installing non-free software by complete accident
 such as "running a GUI and arbitrarily clicking random buttons".

 the absolute worst-case is where an inexperienced end-user, running
 e.g. synaptics, goes "i have no idea what this does, i'm just gonna click it"
 and it happens to enable the "non-free" section, happens to silently and
 happily perform an apt-get update, and wow, suddenly there's binary
 firmware available... all WITHOUT warning the user of the consequences.

 the "convenience" scripts that download mstruetypefonts.

 the "convenience" script that gets the latest adobe flash player.

 the broadcom wifi firmware extractor scripts

 my feeling is, here, that if aptitude, apt, synaptics and other apt front-ends
 added a simple warning dialog "hello you are adding the non-free section,
 this can have severe consequences as the source is not available for
 review", that would quite likely eliminate one of the FSF's major concerns.

l.