[Arm-netbook] Questioning The Holy War

[Pablo Rath]

On Thu, Dec 06, 2018 at 11:22:33PM -0500, Christopher Havel wrote:
> Okay. Forgive me, Luke, for inciting what will inevitably be a
> stake-burning that will be of such grand proportion as to be visible in
> space...
> 
> ...but...
> 
> ...I have to admit that I just don't "get it".

Let us try to stay civil :)

> 
> And not having access to Flash is always an annoyance when it
> occurs. 

Isn't flash already dead? I am quite happy that it gets less and less
relevant each day as it appeared to be such a pain in the neck and caused a
lot of troubles when switching to Linux years ago. 

>Even my phone is a Samsung Galaxy S7 - not exactly flying the flag
> of happy freedom-ness.
> 

Altough I type this reply from a Libreboot T400 (RYF certified) running
Debian stable with only the main repo enabled I also own and use a
smartphone and a tablet running android.

> ...and that's kind of where I usually draw the line. If a guven application
> doesn't 'shoot the cat' -- cause obvious system instability or exhibit
> other overtly malicious activity during use -- and it performs the task(s)
> it was designed for, it seems to me it ought to be considered just fine, at
> least for the most part.

How do you know if the source is closed? :)

There are many (valid) reasons to reject closed source software ranging
from "because I can", "I am just curious", "scientific and research",
"security", "bad past experience with closed source", "forced upgrades"
and so on.
I believe that the FLOSS-model is better but it is not the holy grail
either. 
Apparently FLOSS has bugs, security holes and unexpected problems.
Errors are a part of our human existence.  
The internet is full of discussions, essays, blogposts and free books on
this topic so I think there is no need to repeat these sources.
In the end you have to make this decision for yourself based on your
knowledge and critical evalation of your sources. 

> Yet, almost every message on this list seems to carry with it the
> implication -- if not express statement -- that if a given application
> can't be openly audited on a remarkably low level by a random layperson at
> a random time and place -- leaving alone the fact that most ordinary
> individuals severely lack the knowledge and education required for that
> task -- it must therefore be evil and untrustworthy and oh god we can't
> have any of that sort of thing around here, shoo shoo...

Well, this is a libre centered mailing list and in my opinion a quite
friendly one. I have been burned by projects that were "open source" and
turned out to require blobs. It can be so hard to find out if certain
hardware will require blobs so I find the strict libre approach of
eoma68 and this mailing list quite liberating.

kind regards
Pablo