9 ms·

I guess that in their mind, they're producing code for some utopic x86 system that does not have non-open microcode baked in, in which case their approach would

I guess that in their mind, they're producing code for some utopic x86 system that does not have non-open microcode baked in, in which case their approach would be right. This is a complete denial of reality, of course, and at the cost of the user. Religious dogma, as you put it, seems like an apt description.

marcan_42 5y ago
Their approach is firmly stuck in the computing paradigm of the 70s and 80s, much like Stallman is personally stuck in the social narrative of the same era. The FSF and him refuse to change and adapt to the times. But since reality doesn't care about their refusal to adapt, and they can't just throw their hands up in the air and say nothing is free any more and you should just live off the grid and reject all technology, they instead have built a deliberately obtuse set of rules to declare certain things out of scope, so they can maintain the illusion of freedom for their followers while making concessions behind the scenes (and even actively working with manufacturers to devise silly workarounds that fit into that framework, see e.g. the Librem 5's ridiculous secondary CPU core and external flash dance so they can claim the RAM training blob doesn't make their device non-free). Then they're very careful to never talk about this unless prompted; the fewer people know about all these secret blobs they're running anyway, the better. It's basically cult-like behavior - this kind of control of the information and narrative that followers get is a defining characteristic. None of this helps users, of course; what would help users would be being informed about not just exactly what blobs exist, but what the risks are, how they might affect their privacy and security, what update options exist, and whether they can be audited or replaced with free versions in the future. But the FSF doesn't care about any of that. They just want to pretend they live in a blob-free utopia. Edit: Ah, the downvotes have started. I guess the FSF fans have showed up. I hope you're not using an off the shelf mouse to click on the downvote button; those all run proprietary USB HID firmware.
- tptacek 5y ago
  This comment was strong until the last paragraph about the downvotes.
- medo-bear 5y ago
  what does adapting to the times mean? FSF and GNU seem to be about fundamentals of computing and software. have these fundamentals changed?
  - marcan_42 5y ago
    The line between hardware and software has been heavily blurred in the past 30 years. The FSF continue to draw an arbitrary line where none can be drawn, and then say only one side needs to be Free. Since there is no longer any clear line, this gives them the freedom (ha) to deceptively do so in a way that is convenient to them and makes their followers believe they are getting some kind of special Freedom, when in reality the FSF is just tweaking the definitions to make it work. Then they spin narratives about how this is important for not just freedom, but also security/privacy/etc, while their policies have absolutely nothing to do with improving users' security or privacy, as is made evident by the linux-libre issue, among many others. Actual assessment of the privacy/security impact of proprietary firmware on users is a much more nuanced topic, but the FSF are not interested in nuance, they just say "blobs (that you can see) bad".
    - medo-bear 5y ago
      >Then they spin narratives about how this is important for not just freedom, but also security/privacy/etc, while their policies have absolutely nothing to do with improving users' security or privacy i think i have always held the opinion that for FSF and GNU their concept of security was "security through free software". that is free software (according to how its understood by them) comes first
    - onli 5y ago
      There is no nuance there. Without free software there is no software freedom. If blobs are allowed at all that is already a measure to have a system that works in practice, but in no way makes it the position against closed software and blobs wrong. The people criticizing the FSF here act as if Stallman were wrong about these issues because he said it back then already. While in reality again and again he was right about how user freedoms are limited when the principles he outlined are not followed. To give Intel a way to distribute closed source software updates to your processor is definitely a security risk. And we know for certain the actors in the USA that try to use those security risks for their surveillance programs. Don't act like this world does not exist.
- wiz21c 5y ago
  God doesn't exist, that doesn't prevent him of being. The quest for freedom is, of course, an idealistic one. The important thing is that, in their fight to promote freedom, they meet obstacles. Those friction points reveal the lack of freedom. And so, although they don't reach freedom, they actually show that freedom is limited. IOW, refusing the statu quo is one of the way to change it. You should look at history and look at how much freedom you have, how much protection you have, etc. and then ask yourself : where does it come from ?
  - vaylian 5y ago
    > The important thing is that, in their fight to promote freedom, they meet obstacles. Those friction points reveal the lack of freedom. And so, although they don't reach freedom, they actually show that freedom is limited. Well said. If problems are not openly demonstrated and complained about, things will not improve.
  - pyentropy 5y ago
    > how much freedom you have, how much protection you have, etc. and then ask yourself : where does it come from Game theoretic behaviour in society that has advanced beyond zero sum. Same goes for reasonable approach to FOSS, like Marcan is doing himself vs the cult and the arbitrary zero tolerance rules.
    - medo-bear 5y ago
      i strongly disagree. i think cult, dogma, and religion accusations as well as misrepresentation of FSFs stance (i have zero association with FSF yet i could see thatbtheir position is being crudely misrepresented) do much to discredit any valid points marcan holds
  - marcan_42 5y ago
    > IOW, refusing the statu quo is one of the way to change it. And yet they aren't changing it. The FSF has had exactly zero success in changing the direction the world is moving in with regards to firmware and deep proprietary integration. In fact, they've done very little for freedom in the past 10-20 years; most of the real breakthroughs have come from much more pragmatic people, such as those developing reverse engineered open source drivers for complex hardware like GPUs. The FSF shows you how much freedom you lack according to their own bizarre definition of freedom... and then does amazingly little to actually improve your freedom.
- dang 5y ago
  Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. It lowers the quality of discussion noticeably. Also, please omit inflammatory swipes like your "Edit", which also badly broke more than one of the site guidelines. Would you mind reviewing them? We're really trying to avoid this sort of hell to the extent possible. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
medo-bear 5y ago
why is it a religious dogma? i dont see the point of hostility. they have every right to hold to those principles as long as they are not deciving anyone and state their values clearly. who are they harming?
- marcan_42 5y ago
  They are deceiving people into believing they are not running proprietary software, while they are, and that software is just not evident because it doesn't live on their filesystem. Then they actively withhold information from users so they will neither find out nor be tempted to find out for some other reason. If they were being honest, they would tell people that this dongle has a good half a megabyte or so of proprietary Bluetooth stack built-in (with runtime patching/update ability; they all do), and they wouldn't deceptively have a "TET-BT4 source code" link that makes it sound like the firmware is open, while it's actually just a tarball of the Linux kernel (which contains a generic Bluetooth controller driver, nothing specific to this device). https://ryf.fsf.org/products/TET-BT4 https://ryf.fsf.org/products/TET-BT4
  - medo-bear 5y ago
    i just looked through this website and found a link to their certification process at https://ryf.fsf.org/about/criteria https://ryf.fsf.org/about/criteria it states: > However, there is one exception for secondary embedded processors. The exception applies to software delivered inside auxiliary and low-level processors and FPGAs, within which software installation is not intended after the user obtains the product. This can include, for instance, microcode inside a processor, firmware built into an I/O device, or the gate pattern of an FPGA. The software in such secondary processors does not count as product software. >We want users to be able to upgrade and control the software at as many levels as possible. If and when free software becomes available for use on a certain secondary processor, we will expect certified products to adopt it within a reasonable period of time. This can be done in the next model of the product, if there is a new model within a reasonable period of time. If this is not done, we will eventually withdraw the certification. END QUOTE According to you, what is deceptive about this?
dang 5y ago
You broke the site guidelines with this comment and it started a flamewar. Please don't do that; we're trying to avoid it here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29286715 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29286715.

marcan_42 5y ago

Their approach is firmly stuck in the computing paradigm of the 70s and 80s, much like Stallman is personally stuck in the social narrative of the same era. The FSF and him refuse to change and adapt to the times. But since reality doesn't care about their refusal to adapt, and they can't just throw their hands up in the air and say nothing is free any more and you should just live off the grid and reject all technology, they instead have built a deliberately obtuse set of rules to declare certain things out of scope, so they can maintain the illusion of freedom for their followers while making concessions behind the scenes (and even actively working with manufacturers to devise silly workarounds that fit into that framework, see e.g. the Librem 5's ridiculous secondary CPU core and external flash dance so they can claim the RAM training blob doesn't make their device non-free). Then they're very careful to never talk about this unless prompted; the fewer people know about all these secret blobs they're running anyway, the better. It's basically cult-like behavior - this kind of control of the information and narrative that followers get is a defining characteristic. None of this helps users, of course; what would help users would be being informed about not just exactly what blobs exist, but what the risks are, how they might affect their privacy and security, what update options exist, and whether they can be audited or replaced with free versions in the future. But the FSF doesn't care about any of that. They just want to pretend they live in a blob-free utopia. Edit: Ah, the downvotes have started. I guess the FSF fans have showed up. I hope you're not using an off the shelf mouse to click on the downvote button; those all run proprietary USB HID firmware.

tptacek 5y ago
This comment was strong until the last paragraph about the downvotes.
medo-bear 5y ago
what does adapting to the times mean? FSF and GNU seem to be about fundamentals of computing and software. have these fundamentals changed?
- marcan_42 5y ago
  The line between hardware and software has been heavily blurred in the past 30 years. The FSF continue to draw an arbitrary line where none can be drawn, and then say only one side needs to be Free. Since there is no longer any clear line, this gives them the freedom (ha) to deceptively do so in a way that is convenient to them and makes their followers believe they are getting some kind of special Freedom, when in reality the FSF is just tweaking the definitions to make it work. Then they spin narratives about how this is important for not just freedom, but also security/privacy/etc, while their policies have absolutely nothing to do with improving users' security or privacy, as is made evident by the linux-libre issue, among many others. Actual assessment of the privacy/security impact of proprietary firmware on users is a much more nuanced topic, but the FSF are not interested in nuance, they just say "blobs (that you can see) bad".
  - medo-bear 5y ago
    >Then they spin narratives about how this is important for not just freedom, but also security/privacy/etc, while their policies have absolutely nothing to do with improving users' security or privacy i think i have always held the opinion that for FSF and GNU their concept of security was "security through free software". that is free software (according to how its understood by them) comes first
  - onli 5y ago
    There is no nuance there. Without free software there is no software freedom. If blobs are allowed at all that is already a measure to have a system that works in practice, but in no way makes it the position against closed software and blobs wrong. The people criticizing the FSF here act as if Stallman were wrong about these issues because he said it back then already. While in reality again and again he was right about how user freedoms are limited when the principles he outlined are not followed. To give Intel a way to distribute closed source software updates to your processor is definitely a security risk. And we know for certain the actors in the USA that try to use those security risks for their surveillance programs. Don't act like this world does not exist.
wiz21c 5y ago
God doesn't exist, that doesn't prevent him of being. The quest for freedom is, of course, an idealistic one. The important thing is that, in their fight to promote freedom, they meet obstacles. Those friction points reveal the lack of freedom. And so, although they don't reach freedom, they actually show that freedom is limited. IOW, refusing the statu quo is one of the way to change it. You should look at history and look at how much freedom you have, how much protection you have, etc. and then ask yourself : where does it come from ?
- vaylian 5y ago
  > The important thing is that, in their fight to promote freedom, they meet obstacles. Those friction points reveal the lack of freedom. And so, although they don't reach freedom, they actually show that freedom is limited. Well said. If problems are not openly demonstrated and complained about, things will not improve.
- pyentropy 5y ago
  > how much freedom you have, how much protection you have, etc. and then ask yourself : where does it come from Game theoretic behaviour in society that has advanced beyond zero sum. Same goes for reasonable approach to FOSS, like Marcan is doing himself vs the cult and the arbitrary zero tolerance rules.
  - medo-bear 5y ago
    i strongly disagree. i think cult, dogma, and religion accusations as well as misrepresentation of FSFs stance (i have zero association with FSF yet i could see thatbtheir position is being crudely misrepresented) do much to discredit any valid points marcan holds
- marcan_42 5y ago
  > IOW, refusing the statu quo is one of the way to change it. And yet they aren't changing it. The FSF has had exactly zero success in changing the direction the world is moving in with regards to firmware and deep proprietary integration. In fact, they've done very little for freedom in the past 10-20 years; most of the real breakthroughs have come from much more pragmatic people, such as those developing reverse engineered open source drivers for complex hardware like GPUs. The FSF shows you how much freedom you lack according to their own bizarre definition of freedom... and then does amazingly little to actually improve your freedom.
dang 5y ago
Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. It lowers the quality of discussion noticeably. Also, please omit inflammatory swipes like your "Edit", which also badly broke more than one of the site guidelines. Would you mind reviewing them? We're really trying to avoid this sort of hell to the extent possible. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

medo-bear 5y ago

why is it a religious dogma? i dont see the point of hostility. they have every right to hold to those principles as long as they are not deciving anyone and state their values clearly. who are they harming?

marcan_42 5y ago
They are deceiving people into believing they are not running proprietary software, while they are, and that software is just not evident because it doesn't live on their filesystem. Then they actively withhold information from users so they will neither find out nor be tempted to find out for some other reason. If they were being honest, they would tell people that this dongle has a good half a megabyte or so of proprietary Bluetooth stack built-in (with runtime patching/update ability; they all do), and they wouldn't deceptively have a "TET-BT4 source code" link that makes it sound like the firmware is open, while it's actually just a tarball of the Linux kernel (which contains a generic Bluetooth controller driver, nothing specific to this device). https://ryf.fsf.org/products/TET-BT4 https://ryf.fsf.org/products/TET-BT4
- medo-bear 5y ago
  i just looked through this website and found a link to their certification process at https://ryf.fsf.org/about/criteria https://ryf.fsf.org/about/criteria it states: > However, there is one exception for secondary embedded processors. The exception applies to software delivered inside auxiliary and low-level processors and FPGAs, within which software installation is not intended after the user obtains the product. This can include, for instance, microcode inside a processor, firmware built into an I/O device, or the gate pattern of an FPGA. The software in such secondary processors does not count as product software. >We want users to be able to upgrade and control the software at as many levels as possible. If and when free software becomes available for use on a certain secondary processor, we will expect certified products to adopt it within a reasonable period of time. This can be done in the next model of the product, if there is a new model within a reasonable period of time. If this is not done, we will eventually withdraw the certification. END QUOTE According to you, what is deceptive about this?

dang 5y ago

You broke the site guidelines with this comment and it started a flamewar. Please don't do that; we're trying to avoid it here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29286715 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29286715.