[Freedombox-discuss] Intel Compute Stick

Jonas Smedegaard dr at jones.dk
Tue Jan 13 22:12:32 UTC 2015


Quoting Sunil Mohan Adapa (2015-01-13 21:05:38)
> On Wednesday 14 January 2015 01:08 AM, Blibbet wrote:
>> To me it is unsuitable for a FreedomBox due to firmware, which is 
>> probably UEFI-based if hardware comes from Intel.
>
> Indeed, proprietary firmware is a deal breaker.

You mean UEFI specifically, or that *any* use of proprietary firmware is 
a deal breaker?

Makes sense to me to steer free of proprietary code whereever possible, 
and we have enough options not requiring proprietary firmware injected 
at boot time, but I think it is too early to set the bar so high as to 
require no proprietary firmware exist soldered onto the board.

If you mean only UEFI, then why avoid that specifically? Yes, I know 
that Free firmware like Coreboot is better when offered (which is not 
the case currently), but how is e.g. proprietary BIOS better?


> We should consider promising FreedomBox users images and devices with 
> only free software and firmware.  Especially since we do seem to have 
> some viable hardware options.  In the last meeting everyone seem to 
> agree that we should remove non-free repositories from FreedomBox 
> images wherever possible.  This would be a step further.

What do you mean by "whereever possible" in above?  Is non-free Debian 
repositories less of a deal breaker than UEFI or other pre-loaded 
proprietary firmware?  If so, why?

****

60 boards now for sale arguably match or surpass the DreamPlug.  Makes 
sense to me to raise the bar higher, but not arbitrarily.

We could add a requirement that the board must not use UEFI (if that is 
sensible - see my question above).  That would still leave is with 55 
options.

We could add a requirement that the board must be Open Hardware.  That 
would leave us with 12 options from 3 vendors.

What do people think?  Do anyone disagree with the requirements 
currently at <https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/TargetedHardware>?


 - Jonas

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

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