6 ms·

Lets compare it to all the other options, shall we? Perfect is the enemy of good, and your uncompromising way of doing things (including not loading microcode '

by Fnoord 5y ago

Lets compare it to all the other options, shall we? Perfect is the enemy of good, and your uncompromising way of doing things (including not loading microcode 'because it is closed source') is, to put it simple: harmful. And unusual, as well (its not a dealbreaker for many people). The laptop is modular and repairable, just like a Fairphone is modular and repairable. Its a great step forward and, while not perfect and possibly a reason to not buy it, a minor detail for most people. If we should follow FSF's principles we would not be able to load microcode to fix Spectre 'because it is proprietary' like Trisquel apparently does. Meanwhile, Librem 5 delivers awful performance, and Pinephone offer 30 days warranty. Both have killswitches though: great feature. Again, perfect is the enemy of good. Because if killswitches are a requirement for you, then these are about your two options. If a modular laptop is a requirement for you, you are bound to what? Old Thinkpads?

salawat 5y ago
...I'm more curious why firmware is even closed source. Seems to me, just releasing the assembler, documentation and a datasheet should be basic courtesy. Then again everything I think that way about is apparently a mortal sin in the business world.
- loup-vaillant 5y ago
  I hear hardware vendors are scared shitless of running awful of other hardware vendor's patents. If they released their firmware, this would give other folks ammunitions to attack them in court. Personally, I don't care much about firmware being proprietary, if it cannot be used to meaningfully change the functionality of the chip. But I do care about the chip ultimately following a public specification. I want an ISA just like x86, ARM, or RISC-V. Tell me the size and format of the ring buffer I must write to or read from, and I'll program the rest. But even that is still too much to ask for apparently. Graphics cards are getting closer with lower level drivers like DX12 and Vulkan, but we're not quite there yet.
  - salawat 5y ago
    Unfortunately, from my understanding, hardware innovation seems to be on a trajectory whereby it is exactly going toward the case that most functionality is "soft" and thereby fundamental changes can be wrought through microcode. Just look at Nvidia's use of FALCON's. Hardware manufacturers seemingly WANT to be able to use the same piece of hardware for different jobs, and having blobs tooled to reconfigure it is the way to go. My biggest problem is that figuring this state of affairs out is like pulling teeth.
    - loup-vaillant 5y ago
      That’s the thing about microcoded machines: they’re fundamentally flexible. Even so, to be honest I don’t care too much about that. What I really want is a reliable, stable enough interface to the hardware. Besides, there are other ways to get that flexibility. CPUs for instance have a very flexible ISA: even if they’re set in stone, we can use them for pretty much anything, the only real limitation being performance. Now when I think about it, even if firmware can significantly change the functionality of a chip, I don’t care too much of it being proprietary. Not more than I care about fixed hardware being proprietary. It’s okay for a piece of hardware to have 3 or 10 different configurations, as long as (i) I can trust that each configuration works as advertised, and (ii) the ISA I got from each configuration is publicly documented. There’s a practical reason for this wish: hardware is typically orders of magnitude more reliable than software. That’s mostly because buggy software is easily updated, while flawed hardware is often impossible to sell. CPU bugs do happen, but they’re sufficiently few and far between that when my programs behave unexpectedly, I can safely assume it’s the software’s fault. I don’t want drivers any more, I want the hardware’s manual. https://caseymuratori.com/blog_0031 https://caseymuratori.com/blog_0031
- kmeisthax 5y ago
  So, the thing is that, in proprietary software development, a lot of stuff is licensed and copied around, because the engineers need to get their jobs done on time. Legal makes sure that everyone actually is working with properly-licensed code (usually), but the definition of "properly-licensed" is going to be in the very narrow definition of "what do we need to license in order to ship the product". Most of us here think of copyright in the way Disney or Nintendo thinks of copyright: we own the thing, and you don't get to touch the thing. However, to actually get 100% ownership over a copyrighted work, you actually have to make 100% of the work. If you're just buying what you need to make the thing work, then your ownership over the resulting software is going to be thin. After all, the people who sold you the software are going to want to be able to sell it to other people, and in order for that to work, those other people need to not have the software. Which means that all those licenses are going to have provisions on further redistribution so that they still have their copyright monopoly. If you want to release source, then you have to go back to everyone you bought software from and renegotiate licenses on a far more expensive basis. Because you're asking them to take all the money they will ever make on that software all in one go. For similar reasons, things like licensed music tracks in games are far cheaper if the license is for a limited time, because then the record label can ask for more money later on. The irony of proprietary software development is that it can actually be just as collaborative as Free; but only if every participant regularly pays back into the system. In contrast, the Free Software world tends to have some of the strictest copyright hygiene in any software industry. You have to, because the whole point is to more or less waive copyright interest in the code - and to do that, you need to have Disney-level ownership over everything. We can thus look at copyright as a sort of deliberate cultural poisoning that puts software developers and artists into the position of having to demand troll tolls everywhere.
fsflover 5y ago
> your uncompromising way of doing things (including not loading microcode 'because it is closed source') Libreboot disagrees with that: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/libreplanet-discuss/2022-01/msg00019.html https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/libreplanet-discuss/2022-.... Also, FSF would never endorse an Intel CPU with disabled Intel ME. It must be fully removed to get the RYF certification.
- Fnoord 5y ago
  ..and still, a Fairphone is more free than almost every smartphone out there. And still, a Framework is more free than almost every laptop out there. Because they are easily repairable because of their modularity. Something, yes, Thinkpads used to be too. But you're bound to old, refurbished ones (X230/T430 apparently) [1]. You don't care about that, you only care about one thing, and the rest is seemingly rationalized as irrelevant. Again, perfect is the enemy of good, akin to release early, release often. [1] https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/certified-hardware/ https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/certified-hardware/
  - fsflover 5y ago
    > Fairphone is more free than almost every smartphone out there Except it relies on proprietary drivers, which will not be updated by the vendor, resulting in a brick after some years. Librem 5 and Pinephone will receive software updates forever. > But you're bound to old, refurbished ones (X230/T430 apparently) [1]. Not necessarily: https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/community-recommended-computers/5560 https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/community-recommended-computers.... > Librem 5 delivers awful performance What do you mean? It can run 3D games and provides full desktop mode. What else do you need?
    - marcan_42 5y ago
      > Librem 5 Ah yes, that phone where the FSF told them they had to move a blob from the bootloader into an external Flash memory and load it through two layers of CPUs, because going through that pointless dance magically makes it Free™ (read: hidden enough that users won't notice so they won't realize they're still running a blob as part of something as critical as making the RAM work). Also that phone which runs a pile of other giant blobs, including the USB-PD controller and the baseband, of course.

by Fnoord 5y ago

salawat 5y ago

...I'm more curious why firmware is even closed source. Seems to me, just releasing the assembler, documentation and a datasheet should be basic courtesy. Then again everything I think that way about is apparently a mortal sin in the business world.

loup-vaillant 5y ago
I hear hardware vendors are scared shitless of running awful of other hardware vendor's patents. If they released their firmware, this would give other folks ammunitions to attack them in court. Personally, I don't care much about firmware being proprietary, if it cannot be used to meaningfully change the functionality of the chip. But I do care about the chip ultimately following a public specification. I want an ISA just like x86, ARM, or RISC-V. Tell me the size and format of the ring buffer I must write to or read from, and I'll program the rest. But even that is still too much to ask for apparently. Graphics cards are getting closer with lower level drivers like DX12 and Vulkan, but we're not quite there yet.
- salawat 5y ago
  Unfortunately, from my understanding, hardware innovation seems to be on a trajectory whereby it is exactly going toward the case that most functionality is "soft" and thereby fundamental changes can be wrought through microcode. Just look at Nvidia's use of FALCON's. Hardware manufacturers seemingly WANT to be able to use the same piece of hardware for different jobs, and having blobs tooled to reconfigure it is the way to go. My biggest problem is that figuring this state of affairs out is like pulling teeth.
  - loup-vaillant 5y ago
    That’s the thing about microcoded machines: they’re fundamentally flexible. Even so, to be honest I don’t care too much about that. What I really want is a reliable, stable enough interface to the hardware. Besides, there are other ways to get that flexibility. CPUs for instance have a very flexible ISA: even if they’re set in stone, we can use them for pretty much anything, the only real limitation being performance. Now when I think about it, even if firmware can significantly change the functionality of a chip, I don’t care too much of it being proprietary. Not more than I care about fixed hardware being proprietary. It’s okay for a piece of hardware to have 3 or 10 different configurations, as long as (i) I can trust that each configuration works as advertised, and (ii) the ISA I got from each configuration is publicly documented. There’s a practical reason for this wish: hardware is typically orders of magnitude more reliable than software. That’s mostly because buggy software is easily updated, while flawed hardware is often impossible to sell. CPU bugs do happen, but they’re sufficiently few and far between that when my programs behave unexpectedly, I can safely assume it’s the software’s fault. I don’t want drivers any more, I want the hardware’s manual. https://caseymuratori.com/blog_0031 https://caseymuratori.com/blog_0031
kmeisthax 5y ago
So, the thing is that, in proprietary software development, a lot of stuff is licensed and copied around, because the engineers need to get their jobs done on time. Legal makes sure that everyone actually is working with properly-licensed code (usually), but the definition of "properly-licensed" is going to be in the very narrow definition of "what do we need to license in order to ship the product". Most of us here think of copyright in the way Disney or Nintendo thinks of copyright: we own the thing, and you don't get to touch the thing. However, to actually get 100% ownership over a copyrighted work, you actually have to make 100% of the work. If you're just buying what you need to make the thing work, then your ownership over the resulting software is going to be thin. After all, the people who sold you the software are going to want to be able to sell it to other people, and in order for that to work, those other people need to not have the software. Which means that all those licenses are going to have provisions on further redistribution so that they still have their copyright monopoly. If you want to release source, then you have to go back to everyone you bought software from and renegotiate licenses on a far more expensive basis. Because you're asking them to take all the money they will ever make on that software all in one go. For similar reasons, things like licensed music tracks in games are far cheaper if the license is for a limited time, because then the record label can ask for more money later on. The irony of proprietary software development is that it can actually be just as collaborative as Free; but only if every participant regularly pays back into the system. In contrast, the Free Software world tends to have some of the strictest copyright hygiene in any software industry. You have to, because the whole point is to more or less waive copyright interest in the code - and to do that, you need to have Disney-level ownership over everything. We can thus look at copyright as a sort of deliberate cultural poisoning that puts software developers and artists into the position of having to demand troll tolls everywhere.

fsflover 5y ago

> your uncompromising way of doing things (including not loading microcode 'because it is closed source') Libreboot disagrees with that: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/libreplanet-discuss/2022-01/msg00019.html https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/libreplanet-discuss/2022-.... Also, FSF would never endorse an Intel CPU with disabled Intel ME. It must be fully removed to get the RYF certification.

Fnoord 5y ago
..and still, a Fairphone is more free than almost every smartphone out there. And still, a Framework is more free than almost every laptop out there. Because they are easily repairable because of their modularity. Something, yes, Thinkpads used to be too. But you're bound to old, refurbished ones (X230/T430 apparently) [1]. You don't care about that, you only care about one thing, and the rest is seemingly rationalized as irrelevant. Again, perfect is the enemy of good, akin to release early, release often. [1] https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/certified-hardware/ https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/certified-hardware/
- fsflover 5y ago
  > Fairphone is more free than almost every smartphone out there Except it relies on proprietary drivers, which will not be updated by the vendor, resulting in a brick after some years. Librem 5 and Pinephone will receive software updates forever. > But you're bound to old, refurbished ones (X230/T430 apparently) [1]. Not necessarily: https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/community-recommended-computers/5560 https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/community-recommended-computers.... > Librem 5 delivers awful performance What do you mean? It can run 3D games and provides full desktop mode. What else do you need?
  - marcan_42 5y ago
    > Librem 5 Ah yes, that phone where the FSF told them they had to move a blob from the bootloader into an external Flash memory and load it through two layers of CPUs, because going through that pointless dance magically makes it Free™ (read: hidden enough that users won't notice so they won't realize they're still running a blob as part of something as critical as making the RAM work). Also that phone which runs a pile of other giant blobs, including the USB-PD controller and the baseband, of course.