How close does the Pyra's design come to respecting your freedom?

[bzar]

I was with this up to the point when community-made software that did not adhere to the restrictions meant for the company became a problem. The moment the restrictions start leaking from the company to the users is where I draw the line.

Then don't get RYF certification. It's that simple.And it isn't that community-made software is a problem for the company making the device, there is absolutely nothing in the RYF that says the community cannot make its own software. THAT would be counter to the FSF's ideals. The problem for the company only comes when the company does anything that looks like it endorses non-free software.

Imagine you're a hardcore vegetarian and you start going to our Pyra-cafe because it calls itself vegetarian, and then you find out they do keep bacon in the freezer, just in case anyone asks: they don't really advertise it, maybe the servers occasionally slip that they have somthing "extra". Regardless, if you're a hardcore vegetarian and you find out your favourite "vegetarian" restaurant stocks bacon you will feel betrayed, especially if you manage to hear about this bacon and assume, because this is a certified vegetarian restaurant and therefore everything they serve must be vegetarian, that it is some kind of veggie bacon, so you order it just to try it. And when it turns out it isn't, you can no longer trust that "vegetarian" identification.

RYF protects the user from this. If a company really believes 100% in the FSF and wants to get RYF certification then they will have no problem following the requirements. We cannot, nor should we try, to follow the requirements, therefore the Pyra cannot be RYF certified. Move on.

edit: to again drive the analogy home, the vegetarian restaurant can't serve bacon and call itself vegetarian, but if you order a veggie sandwhich, walk out the door, and put bacon on it from a nearby bacon vendor then there's no problem, the cafe is still vegetarian and you, as the end user, still have the right to bacon. The cafe just can't serve bacon itself and still call itself vegetarian.

I consider the case where the non-ryf stuff comes from the community more like this: There's a vegetarian cafe, that allows people to bring their own meat if they want to. They can even share their meat with the other patrons if both parties so wish. The cafe is still vegetarian and only serves vegetarian-aligned consumables.

 

[Binky]

I really don't like it if I go to a restaurant, order a vegetarian lasagna, and find little pieces of meat in my mouth, because the restaurant chef seems to have the idea that "vegetarian" means "includes a larger than usual amount of vegetables".

Like seriously, imagine you go to a restaurant and they have "lactose free ice cream" and you're like "hell yeah! I'm lactose intollerant, I haven't had ice cream in a while, I'mma gonna try it!" and then you find out that "lactose free" was apparently just a marketing gimick and you're sitting on the toilet for the next million years?

Both of these are cases of false advertising. Nobody likes being lied to, but until you show that its impossible for our metaphorical cafe to serve truely meat-free products (cooked in a different pan, etc), that isn't relevant.

it isn't that community-made software is a problem for the company making the device, there is absolutely nothing in the RYF that says the community cannot make its own software.

As far as I can tell, it does forbid  the company promoting, hosting, mentioning or even alluding to any community-written software that isn't completely free-as-in-speech.

That prevents them having any kind of official repository, or, alternatively, forces them to create a walled only-free-stuff-in-here garden.

And before someone says it again, I know its voluntary. My argument is that it cannot, rationally, be help up as an ideal, when it requires the product to be so crippled.

As I understand it, bringing meat products into the cafe and sharing them is only ok until the management finds out. If the management gives any kind of recognition to the meat eaters (perhaps by setting up a bring-and-share-table, or letting them use the cafe's tableware), then the food served by the cafe instantly becomes less vegitarian.

 

[diligentcircle]

The "vegetarian" analogy is quite nice.

It's really not as nice as you think. Moral vegetarians and vegans don't eat meat because they think it's unethical to eat meat. No one in the libre software movement, short of a small number of newcomers, is under the impression that using proprietary software is unethical. It's developing proprietary software that's unethical.


It's far more like saying that sweatshop conditions are unethical, and trying to find a job that doesn't have sweatshop conditions. But even that analogy is flawed. Relying too much on analogies can easily lead to mistakes.

maybe an intel SoC could match such criteria.

x86 really isn't any better than ARM. Just recently, there was an announcement that Intel's next generation of integrated GPUs is not going to support hardware acceleration without a firmware blob (same situation as AMD). There are all sorts of other problems as well. Chris, the CEO of Think Penguin, has even suggested that x86 ultimately needs to be moved off of in the future, because that's how bad Intel and AMD are.


The only reason there are RYF x86 computers is because of a lot of effort to reverse-engineer hardware which, at this point, is quite old.

What are you going to do with the nubs and gaming buttons ?

There are libre games that support gamepad controls, you know. Just a few examples: most of Kenta Cho's games (like Torus Trooper), SuperTuxKart, Project: Starfighter.

That prevents them having any kind of official repository, or, alternatively, forces them to create a walled only-free-stuff-in-here garden.

You do realize that most repositories don't function like repo.openpandora.org, right? That would be a security risk. Or, I should say, is a security risk. repo.openpandora.org is more like PyPI.


I don't think RYF would require something like repo.openpandora.org to not be mentioned at all, but repo.openpandora.org is the primary recommended method of obtaining software for the Pandora. If PNDManager wasn't recommended by the OS, was secondary to a more typical repository, and included a bold disclaimer the first time you started it saying that there are no guarantees about the software contained within, it would probably be fine to mention it briefly in a place that's separated from regular advertising (e.g. in an FAQ section, perhaps one asking about installing proprietary software).

 

[ible]

maybe there'd be less confusion if GNU didn't use the word "free" (which has many connotations in english, many of which are counter to GNU's idea of freedom).  it's like physicists redefining the words "momentum" or "velocity" to mean something very specific, except in the physicist's case the connotation of the words is still relatively accurate to the physicist's precise definition.

FOSS is slightly better, but by inclusion of "free" it's still ambiguous.  i'd prefer something like Software with Source, to indicate that if you purchase the software, you are entitled to the source code, or even more clear (and possibly incorrect):

Software with Source, Redistributable Software from Modified Source.

The various open-source licenses (AFAICT) affect what sort of license the Redistributed Software must fall under.  Perhaps that's an oversimplification, though...

 

[comradekingu]

What the analogy fails to account for is that closed software means less choices for the user, while meat means more.

Again, if you want to close your eyes and only focus on the restrictive nature, you are missing the point.

 

[Neelix]

@comradekingu The FSF pushes two agendas that they package into one concept. One is to promote free software. I am 100% behind that idea. The other is to promote avoidance of proprietary software. It's this latter agenda that is restrictive, and by pushing such a restrictive agenda under the banner of "Software Freedom" they are only damaging their own credibility and putting people off.

-Neelix

 

[comradekingu]

On a theoretical level, you are wrong, I agree with the in practice part.

 

[diligentcircle]

maybe there'd be less confusion if GNU didn't use the word "free" (which has many connotations in english, many of which are counter to GNU's idea of freedom).

That's why many of us have taken to saying "libre" instead. Whenever someone asks what "libre" is, I simply explain that "libre" means "having liberty" before explaining more thoroughly, and most people seem to understand quite easily.


The FSF can't change its name, though, so "free software" is going to remain as a historical artifact of our speech patterns for the foreseeable future even if the FSF uses the term "libre" more.

 

[sebt3]

x86 really isn't any better than ARM. Just recently, there was an announcement that Intel's next generation of integrated GPUs is not going to support hardware acceleration without a firmware blob (same situation as AMD). There are all sorts of other problems as well. Chris, the CEO of Think Penguin, has even suggested that x86 ultimately needs to be moved off of in the future, because that's how bad Intel and AMD are.


The only reason there are RYF x86 computers is because of a lot of effort to reverse-engineer hardware which, at this point, is quite old.

So you're well aware what you request is completly impossible, yet you come here to whine about pyra not matching your unobtonium ?

 

[WizardStan]

As far as I can tell, it does forbid the company promoting, hosting, mentioning or even alluding to any community-written software that isn't completely free-as-in-speech.

That prevents them having any kind of official repository, or, alternatively, forces them to create a walled only-free-stuff-in-here garden.

And before someone says it again, I know its voluntary. My argument is that it cannot, rationally, be help up as an ideal, when it requires the product to be so crippled.

Yes, that is the entirely the point though. They are aware that it is restrictive. They are aware they are not getting 100% of what's out there. The point is that they can use everything that the company in any way endorses without fear that it violates their free-software beliefs. They can drop into the repo, go looking for whatever they want, and install it without even needing to think about the license, the RYF certification promises that it is "free". If they go looking for something on the certified free repo and don't find what they want then the user must accept the possibility that a no FOSS solution exists and must decide for themselves whether they want to go outside their comfort zone and try something proprietary or give up on whatever they were trying to do, or write something themselves.
I know you said not to be reminded that it is voluntary but that is literally the point: it is voluntary! The company is voluntarily taking these restrictions onto itself so that the end user doesn't have to. It isn't violating the end users rights in any way, it is guaranteeing the end users rights so that the end user doesn't need to spend any time worrying about the license. Just like our vegan cafe analogy promises all of its food is vegan so the customer doesn't have to question any of the ingredients. If someone wants to put bacon on their sandwich they can, but the cafe can't cook it for you, that would contaminate their utensils.

What everyone against the RYF seems to arguing is that it would be so much easier if we had a cafe that served all kinds of things and just labeled the menu with "vegan" where appropriate. And yes, that is exactly what we should do, that is the perfect situation for us as a Pandora/Pyra community. If we do that with our cafe then the cafe cannot call itself vegan though. It is as simple as that. Just a regular cafe, no vegan label on the sign. RYF serves a very specific purpose, it is intentionally restrictive on the company so that the end user can feel safe. If it were any less restrictive then the user would be less safe. A vegan in our non-vegan-just-labeled-menu cafe would still need to scan through a list of non-vegan things before they found something they could eat, OR they could just go to all vegan restaurant and order anything off the menu.

 

[comradekingu]

Sometimes not getting 100% of what is out there is exactly what you want. Vaccines exist for this reason.

Ideal does not necessitate practicality nor viability.

Practically nearly all the ARM-SoCs are bad, technically there is no reason for it.

Only in their allowance of non-user modifiable firmware does the FSF ideals conflict with problems to those ideals that arise from how they go about their reasoning.

 

[Bosbeetle]

As far as I can tell, it does forbid the company promoting, hosting, mentioning or even alluding to any community-written software that isn't completely free-as-in-speech.


That prevents them having any kind of official repository, or, alternatively, forces them to create a walled only-free-stuff-in-here garden.


And before someone says it again, I know its voluntary. My argument is that it cannot, rationally, be help up as an ideal, when it requires the product to be so crippled.

Yes, that is the entirely the point though. They are aware that it is restrictive. They are aware they are not getting 100% of what's out there. The point is that they can use everything that the company in any way endorses without fear that it violates their free-software beliefs. They can drop into the repo, go looking for whatever they want, and install it without even needing to think about the license, the RYF certification promises that it is "free". If they go looking for something on the certified free repo and don't find what they want then the user must accept the possibility that a no FOSS solution exists and must decide for themselves whether they want to go outside their comfort zone and try something proprietary or give up on whatever they were trying to do, or write something themselves.

I know you said not to be reminded that it is voluntary but that is literally the point: it is voluntary! The company is voluntarily taking these restrictions onto itself so that the end user doesn't have to. It isn't violating the end users rights in any way, it is guaranteeing the end users rights so that the end user doesn't need to spend any time worrying about the license. Just like our vegan cafe analogy promises all of its food is vegan so the customer doesn't have to question any of the ingredients. If someone wants to put bacon on their sandwich they can, but the cafe can't cook it for you, that would contaminate their utensils.


What everyone against the RYF seems to arguing is that it would be so much easier if we had a cafe that served all kinds of things and just labeled the menu with "vegan" where appropriate. And yes, that is exactly what we should do, that is the perfect situation for us as a Pandora/Pyra community. If we do that with our cafe then the cafe cannot call itself vegan though. It is as simple as that. Just a regular cafe, no vegan label on the sign. RYF serves a very specific purpose, it is intentionally restrictive on the company so that the end user can feel safe. If it were any less restrictive then the user would be less safe. A vegan in our non-vegan-just-labeled-menu cafe would still need to scan through a list of non-vegan things before they found something they could eat, OR they could just go to all vegan restaurant and order anything off the menu.

So the pyra cannot be a vegan café case closed. Nothing else to discuss, it's just not possible.

 

[Rockthesmurf]

I'd vote for having big letters saying we proudly do not endorse the restrictive FYF/Respect Your Freedom license, instead we respect the customers, and are proud to give them the power to make their own decisions. This is two fold, we respect the developers and allow them to use what ever commercial model and licensing they wish, and we also respect the end users by giving them full access to all available software and letting them choose whether they wish to support which ever developers they wish.

The Pyra is going to be niche enough, the last thing we want is to impose loads of extra restrictions on ourselves for no gain at all (I don't buy into any argument that having FYF certification would result in any more sales, I actually think it will just cost sales).

 

[WizardStan]

I think you are confusing "respect" with "require".

You "respect their ability to make an informed decision" but that also "requires the user to make an informed decision".

The whole point of the RYF is that the research has already been done, the customer can go to an RYF certified repo and know that everything there is safe, or as much as anything like that can be known.

Stating that you are not RYF is simply telling the user they need to do their own research, that you aren't going to promise them anything. That doesn't sound like something to be proud of.

The Pyra is going to be niche enough, the last thing we want is to impose loads of extra restrictions on ourselves for no gain at all

You are 100% correct. RYF certification is exactly the wrong thing for this market. That doesn't mean that RYF is absolutely wrong and doesn't have its place.Once again, if you are a company that believes in the FSF ideals then the restrictions imposed by the RYF should be no problem for you, they are things that you would agree with anyway. The certification isn't so much a restriction on what you as the producer can do, they are a promise to the end user that you are doing these things so they don't have to.

 

[diligentcircle]

you request is completly impossible

I didn't make a request. I asked a question. (And that question was answered: the Pyra will be worse than the Pandora, because to run it with libre software you will have to ditch sound quality.)

Incidentally, I have not thought throughout this entire conversation that the Pyra could achieve RYF endorsement, or that it should attempt to. It's just not going to happen.

 

[rygD]

The "vegetarian" analogy is quite nice. The FSF are hard-core vegans who only eat fruits that fell of the tree naturally without harming the tree. Most people eat meat and don't really care in which manner the pigs and cows are bred and slaughtered, as long as they can buy conveniently packaged steaks and sausages cheaply in their supermarket.

This is an interesting way to look at this, and I see similarity in my choices for both.  I eat /use animals and animal products, but I am concerned with how they were kept and killed.  Sometimes I eat at a place where I don't know these details ( I am somewhat picky about my food in general, so if I found animal pieces in my vegetarian dish, as in your example, I would probably make very big deal out of it), or I get leather boots with no further information about the cows. My choices in software are somewhat like that.

I love trees, too, however some of the things I do to them may seem like torture or extremely cruel by your hard-core vegans.

About the veggie bacon WizardStan mentioned, there was a place I used to go to that had it as an option.  It didn't taste like bacon, but it was interesting tasting and had a nice texture, so I would ask for it sometimes.  The pig bacon they served was usually soft and not so great since they left it sitting in the grease.

 

[comradekingu]

you request is completly impossible

I didn't make a request. I asked a question. (And that question was answered: the Pyra will be worse than the Pandora, because to run it with libre software you will have to ditch sound quality.)

Incidentally, I have not thought throughout this entire conversation that the Pyra could achieve RYF endorsement, or that it should attempt to. It's just not going to happen.

The pyra also has a modem that is modular to the SoC. You are hard pressed to find a product in the shops today that comes even close to doing this right. In terms of practical freedom, that is important.

If you want great sound-quality, hook up a usb-DAC and amplifier.

 

[Grench]

What everyone against the RYF seems to arguing is that it would be so much easier if we had a cafe that served all kinds of things and just labeled the menu with "vegan" where appropriate. And yes, that is exactly what we should do, that is the perfect situation for us as a Pandora/Pyra community. If we do that with our cafe then the cafe cannot call itself vegan though. It is as simple as that. Just a regular cafe, no vegan label on the sign. RYF serves a very specific purpose, it is intentionally restrictive on the company so that the end user can feel safe. If it were any less restrictive then the user would be less safe. A vegan in our non-vegan-just-labeled-menu cafe would still need to scan through a list of non-vegan things before they found something they could eat, OR they could just go to all vegan restaurant and order anything off the menu.

Something you're forgetting in your restaurant analogy though is that there is no other restaurant. Only one. The Pandora/Pyra family has no competitor. So, the device needs to be all things to all people OR some of those people will simply be left out, to follow the analogy, to starve.

Vegan, Halal, Kosher - in a perfect world there are restaurants and vendors aplenty to specialize in each. In this case, the Pyra is the only restaurant sitting at a crossroads with no other options for hundreds of miles in any direction. In this case the proprietor is kind, though, and allows everyone to eat what they need and want there.

To back out of the analogy, if YOU want to buy the Pyra and run only 'Free' software, more power to you. Nothing is stopping you, but the other alternatives should still be there and offered.

Me? I'm an omnivore. I use a combination of free and paid software - and donate back to the commons if the mood strikes me and I feel like the balance needs adjusting. Call it a Karma model.

For any one group to demand that the Pyra be built, censored and restricted to only service their own needs though - that's simply evil.

 

[WizardStan]

Something you're forgetting in your restaurant analogy though is that there is no other restaurant. Only one. The Pandora/Pyra family has no competitor. So, the device needs to be all things to all people OR some of those people will simply be left out, to follow the analogy, to starve

I haven't forgotten anything, that's completely irrelevant. If we are the only restaurant in the world and want to label ourselves as vegan then we can only serve vegan food. Period. Definition of vegan. It doesn't matter that there are no other restaurants at all, there isn't some "since you are literally the only restaurant in the world I guess you can call yourself vegan while still serving bacon" passcard, it doesn't work that way. If you want to be a vegan restaurant you adhere to vegan standards. If you want RYF certification then you adhere to the FSF standards.

So, the device needs to be all things to all people OR some of those people will simply be left out, to follow the analogy, to starve.

Agreed. And this, among many other reasons, is why RYF certification is not for the Pyra. That doesn't mean that RYF doesn't have a purpose, it means that its purpose is not aligned with ours. The Pyra is not a vegan restaurant, it cannot be a vegan restaurant, the best we can do is put little stickers on the menu saying what items are vegan friendly.

Vegan, Halal, Kosher - in a perfect world there are restaurants and vendors aplenty to specialize in each. In this case, the Pyra is the only restaurant sitting at a crossroads with no other options for hundreds of miles in any direction. In this case the proprietor is kind, though, and allows everyone to eat what they need and want there.

And to that end it simply needs to be called "Pyra cafe". We can hang signs saying "vegan options" and "halal beef available" but we cannot call it a vegan restaurant.

For any one group to demand that the Pyra be built, censored and restricted to only service their own needs though - that's simply evil.

Agreed as well. It's a very good thing that that isn't in any way, shape, or form what is happening here. No one is demanding anything. No one is censoring or restricting anything. Christ, I have spent two pages defending a group that I don't agree with simply because people don't understand it, and after all this time you still don't understand it!You cannot adequately argue against something if you do not understand it and if you are still bringing this up then you do not understand it. Have you read what I've written or did you just gloss over it? Serious question because if you don't have time to read everything I can tl;dr; it, but if you did read everything and still don't understand then I need to revise my strategy here.

 

[Grench]

Something you're forgetting in your restaurant analogy though is that there is no other restaurant. Only one. The Pandora/Pyra family has no competitor. So, the device needs to be all things to all people OR some of those people will simply be left out, to follow the analogy, to starve

I haven't forgotten anything, that's completely irrelevant. If we are the only restaurant in the world and want to label ourselves as vegan then we can only serve vegan food. Period. Definition of vegan. It doesn't matter that there are no other restaurants at all, there isn't some "since you are literally the only restaurant in the world I guess you can call yourself vegan while still serving bacon" passcard, it doesn't work that way. If you want to be a vegan restaurant you adhere to vegan standards. If you want RYF certification then you adhere to the FSF standards.

So, the device needs to be all things to all people OR some of those people will simply be left out, to follow the analogy, to starve.

Agreed. And this, among many other reasons, is why RYF certification is not for the Pyra. That doesn't mean that RYF doesn't have a purpose, it means that its purpose is not aligned with ours. The Pyra is not a vegan restaurant, it cannot be a vegan restaurant, the best we can do is put little stickers on the menu saying what items are vegan friendly.

Vegan, Halal, Kosher - in a perfect world there are restaurants and vendors aplenty to specialize in each. In this case, the Pyra is the only restaurant sitting at a crossroads with no other options for hundreds of miles in any direction. In this case the proprietor is kind, though, and allows everyone to eat what they need and want there.

And to that end it simply needs to be called "Pyra cafe". We can hang signs saying "vegan options" and "halal beef available" but we cannot call it a vegan restaurant.

For any one group to demand that the Pyra be built, censored and restricted to only service their own needs though - that's simply evil.

Agreed as well. It's a very good thing that that isn't in any way, shape, or form what is happening here. No one is demanding anything. No one is censoring or restricting anything. Christ, I have spent two pages defending a group that I don't agree with simply because people don't understand it, and after all this time you still don't understand it!You cannot adequately argue against something if you do not understand it and if you are still bringing this up then you do not understand it. Have you read what I've written or did you just gloss over it? Serious question because if you don't have time to read everything I can tl;dr; it, but if you did read everything and still don't understand then I need to revise my strategy here.

Actually - I understand quite well and have been reading your posts diligently. Every time this RYF discussion recurs it comes back to the same issue. The proponents would like to 'fix' the Pandora/Pyra/device such that it could receive the FYF's RYF certification. The whole thing tends to be promoted by ungrounded idealists who think the world would be a better place if we all followed them to device and software martyrdom where all programmers and artists must live in squalor or on welfare - which would subject them to the whim of political winds. Idealism is simply not ideal.

A truly free and open device is one on which everyone is welcome to do whatever they so choose - and nothing would be in the way to prevent that (i.e. proprietary drivers). Reality is that no ARM SoC meets their lofty standards. The only mainstream SoC lines that appear to meet their ideals are from a company that many of the same idealists despise for past acts (there apparently is no absolution). I.e. Intel. That ship has sailed.

So, cool your jets. I get what you're saying. If a company makes the choice, independently or through coercion, that they should seek the FSF RYF seal of approval, that is their choice to make. FSF is free to NOT approve any company that does not meet their standards.

By those same freedoms, though, others of us can state that we consider the idealists attempts to coerce or compel this project into compliance to be a load of unneeded nonsense and voice our support of the project regardless of whether or not it contains uncensored references to paid materials, binary blobs of licensed code or other, "egregious sins". True freedom includes the freedom for artists, inventors and companies to get paid for their work - and to protect their assets. It also includes the freedom to grow and roll your own. It doesn't include a right to demand someone else roll one up and pass it.

I figured the restaurant analogy was getting tired and went for other material.