[Fsf-Debian] A small thought on how Debian might be able to help.

[Paul van der Vlis]

op 09-09-14 15:47, Ansgar Burchardt schreef:
> Hi,
> 
> On 09/05/2014 19:05, John Sullivan wrote:
>> For the FSF standards, the key is that there be no nonfree software.
> 
> Is the key no non-free software or no non-free software that the user sees?
> 
> As I understand previous discussions, the FSF is fine with non-free
> firmware as long as it does not have to be loaded by the operating
> system, i.e. already loaded on the card itself or loaded by the BIOS
> before booting the (free) operating system.

The FSF likes it too to have a free bios. They did launch a version of
coreboot without non-free firmware, called "libreboot".
http://libreboot.org/docs/index.html#why

> I also have a question about this: in the extreme case the firmware for
> devices can be more or less an operating system on its own, think IPMI
> cards. Would this count as "free" as the operating system doesn't have
> to load the firmware? If no, why do other devices with non-free on-board
> firmware count as free?

The FSF likes free IPMI too, I expect. But the IPMI software runs on
another device I would say.

I have seen an open source IPMI solution called CoreIPM.
If somebody has experiences, I would like to hear more.
http://www.coreipm.com/

>> The
>> ath9k-htc one is the only currently FSF-certified chipset, but we would
>> consider others where there wasn't any firmware loaded by the kernel at
>> all. The more user-modifiable the device is, the better, but our
>> baseline standard only asks for no nonfree software.
> 
> I agree about this, but don't really make a difference where non-free
> firmware comes from.

That's my opinion too. And remember: everything what you can do in
software, you can do in hardware... It's only less flexible.
So I want free hardware too ;-)

With regards,
Paul van der Vlis.


-- 
Paul van der Vlis Linux systeembeheer, Groningen
http://www.vandervlis.nl