Re: Hardware respecting your freedom

[Arthur Miller]

Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support> writes:

> * 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 came to it slightly differently; was studying and our Uni had Sun's
Ray server with Solaris on it. I soon discovered that it was much
smoother experience to sitt at home, do the assignmenets on my Pentium
II with Redhat on, and just sftp them to the Uni server and compile
everythigg via ssh. Gave me longer mornigns at home, and less wait for
Emacs to redraw then on Uni's computer if there were more then 5 people
logged in.

> I think KDE was not really free at the time.
I used it around 2000, it was free.

> 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. 
That would be a general principle, which express a contradiction to
itself altso it's false -> there are absolute rules. Just joking; yes I
understand what you mean, I also think that every case should be delt
with on case basis; and that every individual should be judged
individually not after the group or such. However there are some
principles and guides whe can follow to make our lives easier, we can't
go philosophize about everything all the time. We can agree that 
killing each other on the streets is not good, for example. Isn't it an
absolute principle we can follow?

>> 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.
Sure, but in this case you are building your experience on facts. That
is ok; Some people build trust on simply belonging to a certain group, a
clan, race, colour or some other traits that have nothing with science
or individual performance to do. It can be good in some case, but it can
also be dangerous.

>> 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.
Hmm, you would better have very good proof that person *really*
understand instructions, and not just believing he/she understands. To
put it in other words; crime is maybe too heavy word to use in that
case. But sure, if someone is deliberately not doing the work as
required, or not capable to do the work, of course they can not be
trusted to continue that work. But I wouldn't mix word like crime in
that; crime is action commited against the law; it is probably not
against the law to sleep at the work; but it may not be desired. But I
am not a philosopher, so please don't take me too seriously.

>> 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. 
That is great; I think people should search more for what the have in
common, rather then what divides them.

>> 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.
That would probbly be illegal, infringing on copyrights. So definitely
no. But there is always freedom of choice. As RMS does: if one don't
like the product one should not buy it. It is a pillar of free market!
People should exercise it more. Problem is just when there is no choice,
as it seems now (AMD also has something similar I have red).

>> 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.
Yes. I sincerely think we live in decade of open source software. I am
not sure if we live in decade of Free software though. Unfortunately;
but I am not a market researcher.

>> 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.
Sure; there have always been completely Free distros. Even Redhat back
at day when I started with it was Free by default, it was up to user to
install proprietary drivers. And the situation has become better. On
software front. Partly due to consumer behaviour, but also partly due
because companies have discovered that open sourced software si good for
business. I m not sure though that we speak of same things here. Most of
those free distros will need to run on those Intel's or AMD's CPUs, and
the blobs we are talking about are autonomous in those CPUs.

I have heard something that Netflix have started some show about users
being the product ... maybe awareness will become even better. I do
not own Netflix prenumeration nor do I have a TV so I have no idea.

> 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.
Indeed, I agree with you. I believe definitely Purism have honest
intentions and that they are doing what they can, and I don't think
Intel is spying on you despite the ME; but it is a principle. Given a
tool there is always someone who will eventually use it. That makes me
very scary of nuclear weapons.

Best regards, and thank you for the kind response