Hardware respecting your freedom

[Jean Louis]

* Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com> [2020-10-21 15:00]:
> Then we have started to use GNU/Linux around same time. My very first
> distro was Red Hat 5.1, I think KDE was somewhere in 1.2 or something.
> Got it from a magazine CD, and I had luck to read all that about drivers
> and Free software before installation. Back than it was much harder to
> get drivers to work and all that. I think my graphic card was TNT2 if
> remember well. I got it that card so I could play Quake, AOE and
> Starcraft. I also had to buy 128 meg of RAM extra.

I was playing games on Windoze and liked it, it gave me hours of
pleasure. And I used GNU/Linux first on double boot system. Then
sooner or later I have realized that it has no sense, and I would need
to fully switch to GNU/Linux, and that would mean, I would need to
forget about some games, I would need to forget about some heavily
used programs.

So then I have sit down, opened the book about Red Hat in Germany
language, it was published by some DATA company maybe Data Becker, I
do not remember, and I looked into it which programs could replace my
routine and my programs I used so heavily. It was not an easy choice
and I can remember me actually sweating before the decision to
completely remove Windoze.

That was 1999.

I think KDE was not really free at the time.

I have also found that almost all the software on Red Hat CD or Suse
CD was free software, only few pieces inserted by those companies were
non-free and for that reason all the CD was spoiled, it could not be
just duplicated and given away, that was a trap they tried to
impose. I could distribute software from CD by duplicating it, but I
would need to remove some pieces, which seemd hard at the time.

So I just neglected it, and made copies any way, and gave to friends.

> Short version: if trust worked we wouldn't need laws, and lawyers. There
> wouldn't be hurt feelings and wars. If you wish we can discuss more
> about trust, but I am not sure we need to.

There is no absolute principle in general. 

> Yet another important issue is that trust based on previous experience,
> as you described in your first response, does not leave space for people
> to make misstakes.

I have staff members, and I track their execution of projects by using
Org files. I can know if staff member is reporting daily for last 12
months, and if report is lacking today, I know there is something
wrong, and it would not matter nothing if reports are lacking for some
days, I would not say anything, I would know it is genuine obstacle.

If staff member starts making reports but cannot really keep up with
the simple routine, then I know this one is not putting attention.

Thus I am building my experience on facts and have to make conclusions
in future based on past experience of facts.

> Companies are just entities, dead things that made decisions. Decisions
> are made of people, it is people that make misstakes. People fail for
> various reasons. Amongs any population there will be certain amount of
> geniouses, certain amount of people with some condition etc. It is
> normal, people should be allowed to fail to. And they should be also
> allowed to correct their misstakes and continues to become a part of
> society.

That is right.

For this reason we do not fire people for mistakes. We fire people for
crimes. Maybe it is crime to repeat same mistake so many times over
and over again when person fully understood instructions and when it
is clear what is disallowed to do.

> That makes for a batter society. It is also not a guarantee they
> will not make a misstake in the future. Saying that company X has
> history of this and company Y has history of that, means that people
> can not change and are not allowed to correct themselves. Companies
> do hire other people, people come and go etc.

I agree on that, and even more than you think based on these
writings. 

> Anyway, if blob had source, and there was enough reason to look at it,
> there would probably be someone to do it.

I just ask myself is it totally hard to get internals of those chips
and reverse engineer that software and make free software.

> Company Y might be really honest about their intention, both companies
> can be honest, why wouldn't they after all? I am of firm believe that
> most people are actually good people. However, if company X believes
> they need to protect their trade secret they have no choice but to give
> an opaque blob.

There is free culture movement now that is derivative from free
software philosophy and I am in agreement with it. For example, our
company have hired an engineer to write a technical drawing for a
machine, and that machine drawing have been made under the GNU FDL. We
can sell the drawing, but we do not want to make obstacle that people
cannot replicate the same machine themselves.

Many companies would benefit positively if they would not protect
those chips.

> So blob does not really solve the problem; it isn't sustainable; it is
> not a general solution, at least not good enough. Neither is holding
> back to year 2006, since one day that strategy will wear out. The world
> will be left without old CPUs. We need more sustainable solution. That
> is why I asked if those things work without network. I am not so
> knowledgable about ME extensions or security in general, but maybe there
> are people who are.

There are solutions, there are today more free hardware computers then
before. It is coming due to increased awareness, and that social
movement is also derivative from GNU free software philosophy and
writings of RMS, FSF hardware endorsements and similar public actions.

See: https://www.fsf.org/resources/hw

and

https://ryf.fsf.org/

And there are those Talos computers, there is Purism notebook, but I
think they did not finish fully the liberation, and there are some
computers that are crowd funded.

Jean