Stallman's Legacy Halts At Hardware (hackaday.com) 208
szczys writes: To say Richard Stallman had a profound effect on free software is not a bold enough statement. The power of the GPL, and his advocacy for software freedom have changed the world. But there is one frontier that has yet to hear this gospel. These days, no hardware is an island. Almost every type of electronics we use is running some type of code, and in almost every case some of that code is secret in more ways than one. From beefy processors to graphics controllers, boot ROMs and binary blobs run in the silicon we base our systems upon. The code is not published and in the rare case that you are able to view the source it is only under strict NDA. This represents one of the biggest barriers to true open hardware.
All in for transparency? (Score:5, Interesting)
"Those who don't understand code, will be owned by those who do"
I'm all for a hardware manufacturer who creates and promotes 100% open hardware with public code provided.....................know any?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
The success of the GPL is in spite of Stallman not because of it.
Most successful GPL program are "Infrastructure based" Operating Systems, Web Servers (the most popular one is under the Apache Open source license) , Programming Languages, Databases. These are software that people use as the backdrop to the real work they are trying to accomplish. Installing a Database will not solve any problems, but using the database to solve your problems may improve your success. These get a lot of action because th
Re: (Score:2)
GPL is a failure, open source is not.
It is interesting you should say this. Whenever I look at the licenses in proprietary devices, I always find a GPL cut and paste job.
The second most common license I see is BSD and almost never see APL.
This is purely anecdotal but it seems odd to make a statement like that when it is clear that GPL is used very extensively.
Re: (Score:2)
I didn't think you could get more ridiculous than your earlier posts. ...
Somewhere in yehaw moonshine county a community is missing a
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
All that for quoting someone and pointing out how ridiculous the quoted text is, let alone his very political sig.
Re: (Score:2)
All that for not being able to formulate an argument and only being able to contribute vitriol. As I mentioned, when you finish Kindergarten, and start mingling with adults that are not solely your shepherds, you will find that in those circles, using reasoned arguments are considered rational and are usually thought of as a requirement for participating in polite exchange of opinion.
Until then watching Sesame Street will still be fun for you.
Re: (Score:2)
It's good for a laugh if nothing else.
Re: (Score:2)
Read your own post above and apply the same standard to it :)
I always do. If you don't know what is meant by: "When adults converse they use arguments", just ask an adult for help.
Re: (Score:2)
Here's a clue kid - Apollo inspired me to go into engineering.
Re: (Score:2)
Utter nonsense. The GPL never set out to achieve "world domination", it set out to protect open source developers and users. Stallman had seen where the industry was going, with DRM locking everything down and the ability to program your own devices removed. Operating systems were already locking people out, vendors were already acting like asshats.
He realized that the iPhone was the ultimate goal of many corporations. A locked down platform that only runs code they authorize, which you are forced to pay wh
Re: (Score:3)
The most successful GPL-program is gcc
It depends on how you define "success". I'd bet there are more Android devices running Linux than developer PCs running GCC.
Re: (Score:2)
The most successful GPL-program is gcc
It depends on how you define "success". I'd bet there are more Android devices running Linux than developer PCs running GCC.
There are more users than developers so it would make sense, but then again "use" is ambiguous here because GCC is in a way used by both developers and users... but there is no sound metric for such an ambiguous criteria, the effect of GCC is perhaps so far reaching that it doesn't matter.
Re: (Score:2)
Except of course that the scenario you claim was an unrealized hope has happened numerous times.
There is an entire stable of free programs and libraries which were GPL'd only because it would be too much effort to reimpliment the GNU readline library.
That library being GPL'd rather than LGPL'd has by itself led to hundreds of other projects also being GPLd and that's just one library.
On the other hand - the C-library would not have such an effect, a C-library must implement a well known common set of functi
Re: (Score:2)
I'm sorry to hear that the Linux kernel has become unsuccessful. Can I keep running a Linux distro anyway? Unless you're using Android, you are likely using a lot of GPLed software as userland, if you're running Linux.
What you attribute to Stallman is indeed what he planned, and for a long time it worked fairly well. One case is GNAT, the GNu Ada Translator, which became Free software because it had to be GPLed because it built on GPLed software.
What's good about GPL? (Score:3, Insightful)
How was it a "right" idea? The society — and generations of programmers — were spending considerable efforts on software, which could not be used by all. This caused a substantial duplication of efforts and repulsed a substantial body of programmers, who preferred the truly free BSD-license instead. Instead of cooperating, people and groups ended up competing. And when the original GPL proved to not be "enough" [wikipedia.org] — for example, it was still possible
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
How was it a "right" idea? The society - and generations of programmers - were spending considerable efforts on software, which could not be used by all. This caused a substantial duplication of efforts...
It was the right idea at the time. What you describe is precisely what was happening in the 1980s. GPL was a drastic medicine for this; since the source could not be re-closed, its sole target was to avoid just that duplication. For achieving this, I applaud GNU, no question.
Fast forward 20 years. People have become accustomed that software is free. From OS to $EDITOR, compiler & desktop. And now the liberty of GPL starts to become a hindrance at times. People want to use GPL stuff for work, and can't b
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
This reminds of labor unions claiming credit for us not working on weekends... Bullshit, in other words.
Sometimes I read a thread here and just spot the most amazing, untrue bullshit - like this line.
I've been in the office Monday through Saturday for the past 3 months - involuntarily. The project manager just had to send a simple email requesting additional resources when the goals on his timeline started slipping. HR and my direct boss walk over to me and tell me that I'm expected to be at work Monday through Saturday from 8am to 6pm. I don't get paid extra for the extra hours. I don't get comp time. I
USL v. BSDi left door open for GNU/Linux (Score:3)
BSD existed since 1970-ies.
But was it free in 1984? Wikipedia says it didn't start to become free software until 1991 [wikipedia.org]. And was it a complete free operating system, entirely free of AT&T encumbrances, in 1992? Once Linux was combined with what the GNU project had produced by the early 1990s, it succeeded in part because of the legal uncertainty surrounding BSD prior to the 1993 settlement [wikipedia.org].
Re:What's good about GPL? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, being unable to hold somebody — like a thief caught in your home — captive would be a violation of freedom. But your analogy is flawed and let's not use it.
BSD revokes no freedoms from anyone.
Whatever is released under BSD remains so for ever. A new development may be made under a different license, but that can hap
Re: (Score:2)
And someone comes along and embraces and extends it, then once it's adopted en masse, pulls the rug out from under everyone...
I'm possibly historically ignorant on this but when has this happened? (and how significant was it)
I can't think of large projects that had a "rug" to begin with when using BSD style licences... and if it was truly that open and suddenly became closed then forking is easy enough... if some company is building their proprietary empire around it and forking causes incompatibility then what do you expect? it was never truly open to begin with.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Saying BSD-style licenses are "truly free" and the GPL isn't is like saying that you're only truly free if you have the right to use a gun to hold others captive. The ability to revoke freedoms from others does not make one more free in any logical sense.
A comparison:
* GPL: use the code for whatever you want, but you must share changes
* BSD: use the code for whatever you want
Seems to me that the latter has one less restriction on what you're able to do. Isn't having fewer restriction equivalent to being more free?
Re: (Score:2)
Nope, it's not. You need to consider the consequences of the licenses too. "You have the ability to place restrictions on other people" means, in practice, that other people will place restrictions on you. (Remember that there's a lot more of them than there are of you.)
Seems to me that having more restrictions placed on you makes you less free.
Re: (Score:2)
A comparison:
GPL: You have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness BSD: You have the right to keep slaves
Saying "Use the code for whatever you want" === "You have the right to keep slaves" is as missleading as politicians saying "encryption" === "terrorist"
Did it ever occur to you that maybe they are both good at different things? maybe you don't have to ascribe to a single ideology like a religious extremist.
In other words: take your straw man absolutist interpretations of two equally good licences and go fuck yourself troll coward.
BSD allows freedom to screw you over (Score:2)
Generations of older idiots do not realize, that corporations are shafting you and laughing all the way to the bank based on *your* hardwork, and you just accept it. There is nothing wrong or shameful about asking for higher compensation, and joining a union to strength your demands by putting workers and executives on an even playing field, and all efforts to "fight" it are misguided and destructive.
FTFY.
Look, I don't mean to be rude in the above statement, but it really irritates me when people refer to younger generations as idiots, just because we have a different philosophy than you do.
In my view, BSD allows corporations to fork the code and never contribute back. They can essentially take everyone's hard work, say "So long and thanks for all the fish", and package up a proprietary version of it and sell it for oodles of money. They don't owe you a thing. They don't owe the open source project a th
Re: (Score:2)
The GPL was never supposed to prevent duplication of effort if people wanted to try different approaches or use different licences. The idea was simply to create a way for people creating software to protect their work and ensure that others would not use it to build systems that were hostile to them. It gives developers assurances that are essential for projects like Linux.
BSD is nice and all, but Linux is clearly the more popular OS. The fact that it is GPL licensed has not prevented large corporations us
Re: (Score:2)
What makes you think gcc can't be used for a BSD project? You can use it on any sort of project. Nothing that is output from GPLed software is automatically under the GPL. Compilers do put their own prewritten stuff into output, which is why gcc has special permission.
If gcc could only be used to write GPLed software, it would never have caught on.
Profit isn't a reward for doing something people want. It's related, in that you are unlikely to make a profit on something nobody wants, but just doing
Re: (Score:2)
Open code turns hardware into even more of a commodity where they start racing toward the bottom in price. No one in the hardware business really wants that. Inter-operability between products per some agreement? Sure. Open hardware. Good luck.
They will need to be forced to allow open hardware by some means or development. It is not in their interests to do so otherwise, and so far they cannot be forced to.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm all for a hardware manufacturer who creates and promotes 100% open hardware with public code provided.....................know any?
yeah, that'll be me.
http://rhombus-tech.net/commun... [rhombus-tech.net]
https://www.crowdsupply.com/eo... [crowdsupply.com]
i also have an RYF / FSF-Endorseable CPU Card under development:
http://rhombus-tech.net/ingeni... [rhombus-tech.net]
just so you know, i currently have a sponsor for the 15.6in laptop, i've been working on it for 14 months now. sponsorship works well for two reasons: firstly, investment is usually profit-driven, so the priority is on maximising the investor's profits instead of getting the product - and even more importantly the modular stan
Soap == Stallman's kryptonite (Score:2, Funny)
His legacy also stopped at bathing as well.
Open Source Soap (Score:1)
Unfortunately Open Source Soap, http://opensourcesoap.com/ , is only OSS and not GPL or LGPL.
Re: (Score:1)
Nonsense! Here's a GPLed SOAP library. [sourceforge.net]
Wrong... (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Sure, the PC BIOS was pretty lousy; but we went and replaced with with UEFI, which is essentially an always-on secondary OS designed by the people who thought that ACPI wasn't a dubious plan. That's not exactly progress.
It's also false that firmware doesn't limit you fro
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, the Broadcom decoder situation is a little different to how you describe it. The Broadcom decode is a binary blob that you need a licence to use. You could however implement your own hardware accelerated decode if you had complete documentation for the chip and weren't worried about patent issues. So really the problem is not that the chip has features disabled by firmware, it's that there isn't enough documentation for a free implementation of the firmware and possible patent issues.
This highligh
Re: (Score:2)
The biggest barrier to true open hardware is the fact someone has to pay for a tangible good, and that tangible good - hardware - is designed for a specific purpose. The BIOS and bootloaders and such are immaterial, and do not limit you from using a piece of silicon as you desire. The block is silicon that does what you want to do in the first place. And that carries with it costs beyond just software creation.
I think the point where GPL fails in hardware currently is tooling, and assosiacted low level designs/operations to make ASICs. There's plenty of hardware model designs under (L)GPL, including the OpenRISC. It's not that the materials in the chips is expensive, it's just expensive to start making them.
Realistically something like this could be kickstarted - aka, making a large batch of OpenRISC SoC's, but it would be quite risky, in many areas like performance or having a completely failed batch due to a is
Re:Wrong... (Score:5, Interesting)
The biggest barrier to true open hardware is the fact someone has to pay for a tangible good, and that tangible good - hardware - is designed for a specific purpose. The BIOS and bootloaders and such are immaterial, and do not limit you from using a piece of silicon as you desire. The block is silicon that does what you want to do in the first place. And that carries with it costs beyond just software creation.
i'm designing Libre Hardware, right now. i've been on this task for the past five years, since the embarrassing time when i encouraged 20 software libre developers to join me in buying one of the very first ARM netbooks to come out (back in 2010) that turned out to be GPL-violating. i had to spend a frantic 3 weeks reverse-engineering the hardware in order to provide those people with a GPL-compliant linux kernel.
this example just on its own demonstrates that what you have said is simply untrue in a very profound and subtle way. you claim "The BIOS and bootloaders and such are immaterial, and do not limit you from using a piece of silicon" - how can you load a kernel into memory using the BIOS's bootloader (if there is one) if you do not know how the BIOS *actually works*? how can you load a kernel into memory if you don't have the hardware's documentation? what if the proprietary bootloader (if there is one) has some sort of checksum or DRM where you are not provided the keys?
another example is the IBM / Lenovo laptops, where the BIOS had the PCIe device and MAC address of the WIFI adapter *burned into EEPROM*. quite literally the only way for people to replace the WIFI adapter was to *replace the entire BIOS*. that required a *massive* reverse-engineering effort and we now have coreboot support for many Lenovo laptops.
time and time again i have had to cut certain SoCs and ICs from the list of products because i cannot get the SDK, cannot get the Datasheet, cannot get *any* information about how the SoC or IC works.
so you claim "the block is silicon that does what you want to do" - it only does what you want to do via a hardware API which requires an extremely comprehensive bit-level and timing-critical software-driven understanding of that "block". without that, the hardware is LITERALLY useless. [remember NDISWRAPPER for WIFI cards?]
can you see, therefore, through these examples, that you've fundamentally misunderstood the complexity of the issue, and why there are such severe barriers to entry in the hardware arena?
i *do* understand this, so it's why i have been working for the past five years on creating Libre-compliant eco-conscious hardware, where the hardware - all of it - will be vetted for GPL-compliance before putting it into production. sounds mad? but it's the only way, i feel, that instead of waiting for someone else to tackle this, i'm *actively* taking responsibility for ensuring that there exists Libre-compliant Hardware.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
i'm designing Libre Hardware, right now. i've been on this task for the past five years, since the embarrassing time when i encouraged 20 software libre developers to join me in buying one of the very first ARM netbooks to come out (back in 2010) that turned out to be GPL-violating.
So you have a GPL ARM netbook somewhere? Can you please provide me the URL to download the RTL for that ARM chip you have in that netbook? Also, please send me the URL to download the silicon layout files? Which foundry did you contract with to build that chip? TSMC?
All commercial contract silicon foundries with any semi-recent process node (32nm or lower) require you to sign an NDA before they provide you with the transistor models for their manufacturing process. If your ARM chip design is under a GPL
Re: (Score:2)
The biggest barrier to true open hardware is the fact someone has to pay for a tangible good, and that tangible good - hardware - is designed for a specific purpose. The BIOS and bootloaders and such are immaterial, and do not limit you from using a piece of silicon as you desire. The block is silicon that does what you want to do in the first place. And that carries with it costs beyond just software creation.
Yes & no! It's true that if I take a piece of 'truly open hardware', it would be at the expense of YOU getting it. However, the issue here would be the 'freedom' to fix, replicate the hardware, just like the 4 freedoms of GNU.
Talking just about electronic hardware - stuff that can be done in silicon - you would normally have HDL models of anything you design. Let's say you had a VHDL model of a chip, and wanted to share it. You could send the model to someone else, without giving that someone the
Re:Wrong... (Score:5, Insightful)
What is being discussed is not "free" (as in "free-beer!") chunks of physical hardware, Indeed, that would be tough to do because physical objects are made of atoms - and atoms are not generally zero cost items - so they cannot be copied and distributed for free. We're talking about "free" (as in freedom) hardware that can be understood for $0 and (at some cost/difficulty) copied. The design of the hardware is free (as in beer and as in freedom) but the hardware itself is only free as in freedom.
To look at it another way - if I design and build a house - I can offer the plans for free under a GPL-like license. You can then look at my plane, improve them and you can use the plans to build yourself a house - all without without paying me a cent...but you still have to buy the bricks and pay the builder. You *do* have to pay for your own "copying". That's actually the same with software - if I want a copy of emacs, even though it's GPL'ed, I have to pay for the bandwidth and disk space to make myself a copy of it (the GPL even allows the author to charge me a reasonable amount for making that copy - which is something that almost never happens!) The distinction between copying GPL'ed emacs and copying my GPL'ed house is in the cost of copying the item (fractions of a penny versus hundreds of thousands of dollars). That's not a conceptual difference - it's just a matter of scale - and it's not even necessarily larger. I've downloaded hundreds of Gigabytes of stuff that cost me many dollars worth of disk space to store - and I've downloaded the open-hardware design for a bracket for my "lasersaur" laser cutter that cost pennies to manufacture.
The problem we're discussing with hardware that depends on "binary blobs" is in no way different from writing software that requires an external library for which you don't have source code.
The issue is whether the software library is free (as in beer) or not. If you have to link some GPL'ed program to DirectX in order to run it under Windows - the software can still usefully be GPL'ed because even though DirectX is a closed source "binary blob" - people who run Windows all have a copy of it already. So it's effectively free-as-in-beer. However, if you write your own closed-source middle-ware package and charge people $100 to license it - then creating some GPL'ed application that requires that middle-ware isn't a very constructive thing to do. Of course we'd prefer that all of the libraries we use are also GPL'ed - but that's not an absolute requirement - and it's not a particularly reasonable one out here in the "real world".
OpenHardware that requires use of a binary blob is no different from software that requires some complicated library. If the binary blob is legally copyable (free as in beer) - we can still usefully make our own copy of the hardware. But if the binary blob is either not legally copyable or requires a license fee to copy - then we're in the same situation we were in with software that needs a pay-to-license middleware library.
Viewed in this way, OpenHardware is no different at all from OpenSoftware - EXCEPT that the cost of copying it is higher because it's made of atoms instead of bits.
Re: (Score:2)
The really interesting part is not that hardware is expensive to duplicate, but that software isn't. If you have a CPU and want another, and don't want to pay Intel or AMD for one, you need an extremely expensive fab. If you have an operating system and want another, you send it over cheap digital communications cables or burn a DVD or something inexpensive like that.
I could cheaply provide you with an entire high-quality operating system with lots of additional software, and it wouldn't take that long
Re: (Score:1)
>> Once we can fab processors in our bedrooms or in the basement then the tinkering will start and the knowledge will flow. We're not there yet.
You'll never get there. See all the pending rules about OMGDrones! for an example.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
You'll never get there because you need 99.9999999% purity and precisely balanced climate controls to do cutting-edge semiconductor fabbing. Government regulation has nothing to do with it. You can't build semiconductors of modern quality or capability in a bedroom, any more than Chinese peasants could build backyard steel furnaces during the Great Leap Forward.
Re: (Score:2)
You will never get there because you don't have 4-10 Billion dollars
Speak for yourself.
you obviously don't have the technical knowledge either.
Ah, I see that you were.
FPGA is not a pro golf league (Score:2)
Then get an FPGA development board and write your CPU in Verilog.
Re: (Score:2)
You can fab some *extremely* simple boards and designs this way, yes. You're not going to build anything approaching the computing power of the last 15-20 years on that kind of equipment.
Re: (Score:2)
You can plug and unplug your IDE drives as frequently as you desire, up until the insertion rating of the connectors.
Re: (Score:2)
That is a hardware limitation not a software one...
The Amiga only supported hard drives up to 4GB due to software limitations even tho neither IDE nor SCSI had such hardware limitations. By replacing the software it was possible to use much larger drives.
How to turn C64's S-Video into HDMI (Score:2)
You control the silicon that postprocesses the signal.
The Commodore 64 computer's VIC-II GPU outputs S-Video signals using a 90/11 = 8.18 MHz pixel clock, which is 16/7 times the frequency of the color subcarrier. Put code on an FPGA that samples the luma and chroma signals at twice this rate, and it should be able to guess which color the VIC-II is producing. Then store lines of pixels in a circular buffer in block RAM feeding a line tripler circuit on the same FPGA. Kevin Horton did something like this fo
Re: (Score:2)
You get what you desire by adding silicon.
Re: (Score:2)
how does one do that with the existing silicon, which is what I desire, and supposedly I can get what i desire
You're being intentionally obtuse to make a shitty point. Please stop.
Re: (Score:2)
You can try, just as you can try using gcc to compile Haskell or Lisp code. Success is not guaranteed.
Re: (Score:2)
Lots of computers were pretty much open and hackable before Stallman started the Gnu project. I don't know if Free Software helped or not.
You know you're getting old. (Score:5, Insightful)
When you start missing the days when every piece of hardware you bought came with schematics and firmware listings, instead of six page license agreement printed in four point fonts and written in incomprehensible legaless (and indeed, demanding adherence to reprehensible terms.)
It eould be nice, but... (Score:2)
What's the point? CPUs have hardware interface and instruction set specifications that allow reverse engineering. Sure, some things are microcoded, but microcode is slower than hardwiring and is mostly useful for working around design flaws.
GPUs, on the other hand, are clouded in secrecy and there would be a benefit from opening them up much more than they are now.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
The big problem is security. There are too many places for exploitable bugs, deliberate back doors, key loggers, side channels and other forms of pwnware to hide in modern processors. Do you know where all the components in your PC were fabricated?
That's "security by obscurity" - which is no security at all. If you want to avoid all of those exploits, you have to allow the good guys to find, report and fix them before the bad guys find, hide and exploit them.
Patents ... (Score:3, Insightful)
I think patents are why this can never work.
Pretty much EVERY industrial process is patented by someone. That patent is guarded by a corporation who wants to ensure they get paid ... either through sales, or licensing the patent.
IBM makes a zillion patent applications every year.
There's simply no way you can bypass the sheer quantity of "intellectual property" which encumbers the world. And since pretty much every aspect of the hardware is probably covered under a patent, you're not going to get it.
Hell, even with software, Microsoft used to insinuate that Linux violated a bunch of their patents, but wouldn't ever name them.
The modern world has been structured to serve the needs to greedy corporations. They're not going to allow you to sufficiently change the rules of the game to take that away.
Which is why every treaty these days is having the intellectual property pushed even harder, because governments are on the payroll of entities which want to further entrench their rights as superseding ours.
Keep dreaming.
Re: (Score:2)
It is NOT patents - it is everything to do with policy to prevent coreboot. They don't want hardware under the owners control.
Re: (Score:2)
Such vanity. Such utter vanity.
Which do you think is more likely ... decades of greedy corporate behavior resulting in a "patent everything" mentality ... or some giant conspiracy to stop your pet project?
Companies have been doing this crap since before coreboot. They're sure as hell not doing it because of coreboot.
They want to block everybody, because they want control. They didn't get together and say "ZOMG! teh coreboot is teh enemy".
It's just another bug on the windshield of the inexorable creep of
Re: (Score:2)
Strictly speaking, patents are not a problem for making software open. Open source reveals patented techniques but then, so does the patent application. The competition can see what you are doing but it doesn't matter because they can't use the information.
Which means it is not an excuse for binary blobs. If it source was open, it still would not be free because of the patents but that's another problem.
Binary blobs serve to protect trade secrets including elements are could be but are not yet patented.
T
Re: (Score:2)
Open Source, in discussions like this, is normally used in the sense of the Open Source Initiative. Their definition of Open Source is very similar to the FSF's definition of Free. (And once more we see how Stallman was right when he objected to the term "Open Source".)
Make your own (Score:3, Insightful)
Nothing is stopping you making and using your own hardware, rather than putting expectations on other peoples products. Of course, making your own hardware isnt cheap or trivial, whereas putting expectations on other people is both of those things.
Re: (Score:3)
I take it that
a. you didnt finish reading my post, and
b. entirely missed the point of it.
As Challenger Deep said to the kettle... (Score:2)
Say what you want about Richard Stallman, no one's ever accused him of being too willing to compromise on his principles in the name of pragmatism and expediency.
Oh, wait, they totally just accused him of that.
Stallman's open-source-everwhere view blinds him (Score:5, Informative)
In short: I said there's no way you can have open source firmware for a proprietary undocumented ASIC, that has to keep track with new developments in flash memory every 3 months.
He want on to ask if there was a way to buy a USB flash drive that wasn't field-reprogrammable, or to "convince a company to make USBs [sic] that way". I'm not aware of any, and it's impossible as-is to A) ask a vendor "What chips are you using?" and B) have the vendor use the same controller/flash chips on the same device.
Dude wouldn't listen, and I gave up trying to educate him.
Re: (Score:2)
Dude wouldn't listen, and I gave up trying to educate him.
I was under the impression that sums up his particular strength and weakness. He isn't interested in the particulars of his grand vision that are impractical or impossible. With RMS it's always a "Damn the torpoedoes..." mentality.
Re: (Score:2)
SOMEONE has to stand out at the extreme edge.
No, they don't. Extremists always do more harm than good.
You're either saying RMS isn't an extremist or he has done more harm than good. I disagree with both views. He's pretty crazy on some things. But without him there is no (GNU/) Linux, and probably no free software movement as we know it today. Sure open source would exist, but not the legally binding licensing that has helped to keep open source open.
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps you should focus your efforts closer to home?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Well, open hardware is pretty crippled. When you consider patents, almost across the board hardware innovation patents are a non-started for a small-ish open hardware company trying to cook their own gear. If you're successful enough, someone will sue you into the ground. Software on the other hand can be served from countries which don't have software patents and still get downloaded everywhere. Would x264/ffmpeg exist today if purely developed under US laws? Probably not, but who's to say...
Its hard to sh
Scope Problem (Score:2)
I guess whatever device we're talking about here has had limited scope until this wearable/beacon/smart bubble started. We effectively have known that specific devices (think: a clock, a fridge, an AC unit) did and still do very specific things, and until now we see them doing those things clearly, not transparently, because they are usually one-task devices. So what point was there really in open-sourcing that stuff or requiring any form of software-bound compliance? Not much really.
Now that we're getting
Balance (Score:2)
I don't think it's possible or even desirable for every piece of software to be open source. That would result in a lot of useful software not being written, as many smaller developers will not figure out how differentiate themselves from legal copycats.
Nevertheless, FSF made a huge positive contribution by making compelling critical mass of free software available and forcing commercial companies to share improvements that they make to Linux kernel, compilers and other key infrastructure. We can't even ima
Re: (Score:2)
That would definitely be a game shifting paradigm change.
Re: (Score:2)
And you had a small group of people fixing it instead of multiplying that for every product that needed the functionality.
incorrect (Score:5, Insightful)
From beefy processors to graphics controllers, boot ROMs and binary blobs run in the silicon we base our systems upon. The code is not published and in the rare case that you are able to view the source it is only under strict NDA. This represents one of the biggest barriers to true open hardware.
this is incorrect! the giant barrier that prevents people from having true open hardware is the obscene cost of having your design made into a silicon chip. if you could suddenly get a one-off chip made for $100, we would all be running much different systems and few of them would be related to x86.
Dirty hippie extremist (Score:2, Insightful)
I respect what Stallman has contributed to free software, but at the same time, his views are ridiculous. He is to FLOSS what fundamentalists are to religion. His untenable ideals and overwrought goals drive people away, and do more to hurt the more reasonable open source options than to help free software.
LGPL as a middle-ground. (Score:2)
Stallman is indeed a fundamentalist. His goals are just fine - but he's about as remote from what a typical software engineer is as it's possible to be. That's OK, he's the idealist - and that lets the rest of us be pragmatists.
GPL is great for complete software packages - emacs, gcc...that kind of thing. But for libraries, it sucks. That's why we have LGPL. Sadly, there is a lot of anti-LGPL rhetoric out there https://www.gnu.org/licenses/w... [gnu.org]
I think we need something like that for OpenHardware. The
Proprietary Math Libraries (Score:2)
ixnay on the own-phay (Score:2)
This doesn't affect me because I always talk in code anyway.
Why is it all about computers? (Score:2)
The sales of computers are going down last years, and there are more other devices in the age of "Internet of Things" that are harmful for the freedom of the users. Even simple climate control is not your device, but is designed to spy on your family habits, "phone home" - all in the name of optimizing your utility bills. In the US the practical disadvantage of this unfreedom can likely be just unsolicited junk mail, in other countries with higher corruption levels this data can be sold to burglars who wil
Find and support the good hardware (Score:2)
Buy the motherboard thats been fully examined and found to be open and usable for a developers needs.
Tell the world about it on the web and grow a user community.
Move away from the devices and brands that expose IP's while selling an expensive VPN related product.
Stop buying tame and junk crypto turn key products that have trap doors and backdoors design in as sold and shipped.
Secure and understand what can be as a user and developer.
The cpu, motherboard, OS can sti
Re: (Score:1)
I remember a lot of people back in the 90s and 2000s that tried to use public domain or BSD, MIT, ISC license and where extremely upset when their software was used commercially without anything given in return. The code was often warped and hacked until it was a bug ridden mess, and totally out of control of the original authors.
I'm fine with this, I use an ISC license on things I write, but I know first hand that someone can take the software and never give anything back. And for some programmers, this is
Re:Why are so many moving away from the GPL? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not freedom that in todays society we are not free to kill anyone we want, or take anything we want from anyone else...
Sometimes you have to give up freedoms which would allow you to harm others, and thats what the GPL does... You are given a limited set of freedoms by the GPL, and the primary limitation is that you must grant the same level of freedom to anyone else, you're not free to limit someone else's use of the software.
Re: (Score:2)
Argue the principles all you want, reality is people are moving away from GPL (esp. v3). Maybe GPL did help spread Linux and all the great tools better than MIT-style license would have, maybe it didn't, impossible to tell. Question is what do you do now. If you have too many people leaving, something is likely in need of a fix.
Re:Why are so many moving away from the GPL? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing in the GPL forces you to contribute back changes. You can download GPL'd code, change it however you want, and use it on your own systems to your heart's desire, without having to contribute anything.
However, if you download GPL'd code, modify it, and distribute a binary, you must distribute your code changes under the GPL. If you don't want to do that, write your own damn code from scratch. None of this is forced upon you.
Re:Why are so many moving away from the GPL? (Score:5, Insightful)
Without the GPL we wouldn't have much of the freedom we now enjoy. Would Linux be so popular, would it get as much contribution from private companies if they were able to release their own proprietary versions? Look at BSD. It doesn't benefit much from Sony using it on their games consoles and in their smart TVs, because they don't have to give anything back.
Without GPL software, software that wouldn't exist in the way it does without the GPL, we would be much more reliant on non-free products. We would be less free to compute.
Re: (Score:2)
Would Linux be so popular
If Linux were GPL it would most definitely not be so popular, it's popularity stems from some of the clauses in the GPLv2 combined with the explicit exclusion of GPL provisions in the license preamble [github.com]. The GPL is good in some respects and bad in others. Linux would also not have been anywhere near as popular had the GPLv3 provisions regarding Tivoization existed in the GPLv2.
As Linus has repeatedly said, Linux isn't about Free Software ideals, it is about "tit-for-tat" code contributions (hence the reason h
Re:Why are so many moving away from the GPL? (Score:5, Insightful)
The BSD and MIT licenses offer true freedom. The GPL offers restriction and the elimination of freedom.
this is a very subtle and dangerous perspective that has one extremely large software project which has ended up in complete chaos, causing headaches for many people, including misunderstandings and ignorance by vendors who assume that because the majority of the software is BSD/MIT, the linux kernel's GPL license is somehow magically transmuted to a BSD/MIT license as well.
that software is android.
the only reason why we have things like cyanogen, thank god, is because there is one last bastion of fundamental GPL code left in android devices: u-boot and the linux kernel. without that, the smartphone industry would be viewed with extreme hostility. it's *already* bad enough in cases where companies such as Mediatek blatantly and continuously violate the GPL.
look at what happened with Fairphone, for example. great product, yes? envisioned as being sustainable, yes? and after 2 years, what happened? well, there turned out to be some security vulnerabilities in the version of android that was supplied (by Mediatek). it was *critical* that the users upgrade. but, because Fairphone had naively bought a binary-only GPL-violating OS from a 3rd party OEM company that *DIDN'T EVEN HAVE THE SOURCE CODE*, there was no way to provide updates of *ANY KIND*. the buyers therefore had to abandon their products for security reasons. bear in mind that this is supposed to be eco-conscious *sustainable* hardware that's supposed to be re-usable. it was extremely embarrassing for Fairphone, and a very hard lesson for them.
so that's even when there's a GPL kernel. imagine what it would be like - imagine the situation if the linux kernel *wasn't* GPL? you would end up with the exact same situation as with apple. apple _used_ to release the kernel source code (based on FreeBSD) back to the community... they stopped recently. the end result: people no longer actually own their own hardware.
the GPL is, at its heart, a recognition that collaboration is better than competition and secrecy. the BSD and MIT licenses were developed when everybody released source code *anyway*. the licenses were therefore more about fighting the liability that is inherent in releasing code as "Public Domain". everyone *trusted* that the code modifications would be released.... and then suddenly they weren't [did you even *know* for example that Windows 95's TCP/IP stack is actually BSD-licensed?]
google's insistence on using BSD licenses - to the point of re-implementing entire GPL-based pre-existing libraries - has resulted in untold very subtle harm to end-users and to software freedom in general - harm that is very difficult to quantify and explain because it's long-term, and the consequences are ongoing.
the one thing that really really stinks about what google did with android is summed up in this simple question: they replicated dozens of critical low-level libraries and applications that had perfectly-functional GPL versions that were proven and had stable communities based around them (that could really have done with the financial support of google).... so why did they not replicate the Linux Kernel as a BSD-based project as well? that hypocrisy - that they did not also re-create the Linux Kernel as a BSD/MIT project - tells you everything that you need to know.
At least AOSP is going further GPL(ish) (Score:2)
With Google's switch from Apache Harmony-based runtime libraries to GPL-with-Classpath-exception-based code, we have an ever-so-slight uptick in the copyleft nature of AOSP. True, the Classpath exception is a huge exception that makes it arguably lesser than the LGPL (Bradley Kuhn apparently half-seriously argued at the time of its creation for it to be called the "Least GPL"), but even if it's a slight shift, at least it's in the right direction. And it shows that Google at very least isn't actively workin
Re: (Score:2)
True, the Classpath exception is a huge exception
The most popular GPL-based projects have exceptions rather than a proper GPL license. gcc has the gcc runtime library exception, Linux has the preamble in the COPYING file about linking proprietary binaries and Android's runtime with the classpath exception.
Re: (Score:1)
Nice trill, shill. GPL is by far the most popular license on the planet, and it's growing. Whaaa whaaa, BSD, whaaa whaa, MIT. Nope. GPL is the code you'll find in just about every non-Apple consumer electronics device; even though the manufacturers could take vanity-ware licensed projects and keep quiet about them. They don't, though. Wonder why?
If you want to steal another's code, and pass it off as your own, hunt out the substandard and abandoned BSD equivalents.
Manufacturers only use GPL code when it pretty much already does what they need it to do. GPL and other open-source software is nothing more than the commoditization of software.
Which is why software that isn't a commodity - small user bases with stringent requirements that make "good enough" not good enough - is still mostly closed-source. Such as truly redundant highly-available shared-storage databases or WORM archiving for SOX compliance.
Commodity software works like commodity hardware. How often do
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Uhhh...no, it's not the most popular:
https://www.blackducksoftware.com/resources/data/top-20-open-source-licenses
And no, it's not growing:
http://osswatch.jiscinvolve.org/wp/files/2015/02/figure2.png
Re: (Score:2)
How did GP "dictate" to somebody else how they should license code? Are there legal consequences if they chose to ignore the instructions? Jail? Fines? A
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Nobody did due to inertia, as you point out. But what standards compatibility? Linux made quite a few departures from both SVR4 and BSD Unix, but that didn't matter, since there wasn't a real standard as far as the market went. At that time, GPL won by virtue of being the only game in town: there wasn't an FOSS BSD license, that came later. Everything Linux adapted was new - be it bash (as opposed to bourne or C shell), X11 (as opposed to X) and KDE (as opposed to Motif and OpenLook). Not that it hurt