"Respects Your Freedom" certification?

[Neelix]

I think Znirk hit the nail on the head.   While it's true that RYF certification would not turn me off purchasing a device, so in that sense I don't care about it, I would say that I am currently against getting the pandora successor RYF certified.   That might change to a don't care if the FSF were to address the valid concerns that have been raised in this thread,  but that would depend on how they respond.

- Neelix

 

[milkshake]

When for example milkshake says

again I vote YES to FOSS where possible but NO to RYF certificate - do we all agree on this?

I think he actually means "the choice should be up to ED", which would put him in the "don't care" camp - or am I wrong?

If he actually means "NO" to the RYF certificate, as in "I wouldn't buy this if it has a RYF sticker, but I would if it doesn't - the RYF sticker decreases my perceived value of the device", then it is a different thing and I would expect to see some reasoning to explain that sentiment.

When I say "NO to RYF" I mean I would prefer it if the Pandora successor did NOT attempt to acquire the RYF certificate because of the restrictions it puts on freedom (as in speech).

I have no problem with it being 100% FOSS if possible but personally I don't care either way whether we have a 100% FOSS successor or not (for example current Pandora is amazing as is and its not 100% FOSS), what I care about is the device and its ability to empower me to do the things I like.

Also as far as encouraging sales goes I would very much doubt that gaining the RYF certificate would increase sales, in fact because of the restrictions on freedom (as in speech) it could actually be overlooked/under appreciated by the more casual user - as far as I'm aware we are not trying to promote any Pandora successors to just the FOSS purists.

If your aim IS just to get more FOSS purists on board then you do not even need the certificate if you have achieved the goal of a 100% FOSS device.

Does that clear up what I meant? If not I will try to explain further.

 

[comradekingu]

They seem to be up for discussion, it doesnt hurt to ask. Gnu/linux is a no, is that what the RYF is about? If they decide it is, and have a problem with Linux|GNU, then we walk away.

Edit: I am for the case of argument a FOSS purist. In my head it doesnt make me any less concerned with the GNU/Linux, moniker, I think if we want to educate both the FSF and our customers we have to meet common ground.

I understand talking highly about FOSS as opposed to OSS, i dont for the life of me understand why the FSF keeps at it with the GNU/+lig-linux.  If the whole idea is that you can have one without the other, then realize the linux kernel is gplv2 and thats where it stops. So linux is the equivalent to OSS, you dont really know what you get, whereas Linux|GNU is that same kernel into a FOSS environment. Ie. not a shitty router tivo distro.

Also Free software foundation is misleading because free is a plural term, in german and norwegian it isnt, i have suggsted on identi.ca to change FSF into Fri software foundation, but RMS only has autopost, he doesnt read. Lots of other people did though. TL;DR it was suggested to use Libre instead, but it doesnt take away from FSF being F-SF, so my voice of concern went on deaf ears.

Im not trying to rehash a flamewar, im trying to call a spade a spade, my solution works for me, which is more than you can say about FSFs solution working for them.

 

[_wb_]

When for example milkshake says

again I vote YES to FOSS where possible but NO to RYF certificate - do we all agree on this?

I think he actually means "the choice should be up to ED", which would put him in the "don't care" camp - or am I wrong?

If he actually means "NO" to the RYF certificate, as in "I wouldn't buy this if it has a RYF sticker, but I would if it doesn't - the RYF sticker decreases my perceived value of the device", then it is a different thing and I would expect to see some reasoning to explain that sentiment.

Let's not give ED the false impression that some people actively want the RYF sticker while others actively don't want it, when the actual situation is that some want it and others don't care about it.

Jumping into the conversation from the side here, but ...

I agree with you that nobody's saying "I don't want a device with a RYF label on it", per se. But there's an argument to be made against pursuing that label in the first place: it'll take work and time, and it'll force certain choices in terms of what hardware is even an option.

And this is how not caring about it turns into "against RYF": If getting that label requires having (whatever whatever this person perceives as) inferior hardware and paying more for the final product, then those who don't care about the label do have a reason to oppose it.

I think the consensus here is that we don't want to pay more or get inferior hardware, but availability of FOSS drivers could be an element in the decision process - there always has to be a compromise/trade-off between cost, quality, and openness. That is true regardless of the RYF certification. We may all assign different weights to each parameter. For example Grench would maximize quality and not care at all about cost or openness, his weights would be [0% 100% 0%]. Some people want the product to be cheap enough so it sells well, so maybe their weights would be [70% 20% 10%]. I personally have the weights [10% 40% 50%] or so. I would estimate the community average to be [30% 40% 30%] or something.

Of course if for whatever reason we end up with a choice of hardware that makes RYF certification impossible, then there's nothing more to discuss. Many people would be disappointed with that situation though, regardless of their opinion on RYF or the FSF. If however we do end up with hardware that makes RYF certification possible, then there is a decision to be made on whether to apply for it or not.

I think we have already established that getting the label itself is not going to have an impact on the price of the final product (either because the label is free as in beer for ED, or because any fee would be covered by community donations of those who want to get the label).

So the main remaining reasons not to apply would be:

• it takes time and effort to apply for the certification - I don't think it would take a lot of time and effort, and most of it could be "outsourced" to community members
• it restricts ED's use of terminology on the official website/cardboard box/documentation
• it restricts ED's options to sell non-free variants of the same device (since those would need a different name/packaging)

The main reasons to apply would be:

• more visibility/sales
• attract FOSS devs
• promote FOSS
• it's a way to say "thank you" to the FSF / GNU project

In my opinion, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, but that is of course for ED to decide.

 

[milkshake]

The main reasons to apply would be:

• more visibility/sales
• attract FOSS devs
• promote FOSS
• it's a way to say "thank you" to the FSF / GNU project

In my opinion, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, but that is of course for ED to decide.

I think your first point of "more visibility/sales" is a little bit pipe dream. I would wager that the majority of people would actually care less about the RYF certification itself and as I mentioned in my reply above, if you take away eds freedom to advertise it how he sees fit then you would most likely (in my opinion) reduce sales and visibility simply because ed would be forced to disallow the promotion of non FOSS specific software / OS's.

The second 2 points are valid and that would be nice.

The last point is neither here not there because not everyone cares to thank the FSF / GNU project (I'm not saying im one of those people, I'm just making a point) plus some people may choose to use use a distribution that  does not contain any GNU contributions.

I mean if we go that route then why don't we thanks the people that developed the first PCB technology or LCD technology while your at it?

 

[comradekingu]

well its only powerVR where there isnt FOSS driver availability. So _unless_ its that we are still open doors.

• One question though, are we prepared to pay extra for Foss wifi nic? That could bring along with it master mode and injection, which ive seen some people requesting. How much extra is it?
• (Mainline things, and good support is important, and not at all incompatible with FOSS hardware.)
• Do we make an open letter to the FSF and ask about their terms?
  

Milkshake, I dont want to go down the road of credit, because that is just negative publicity. I want to say its FOSS because it is. As that is optional, it want to be optional to append |GNU _after_ linux. Which it is.

The only reason saying GNU contributes sometihng along with saying linux is because thats the difference.

Same with BSD, it _could_ be some OSX attempt, but its not, its FOSS BSD if anything, whatever the branch be called. (free-bsd, dragonfly, pcbsd etc) Everyone in the BSD world seem to go along with freedom of choice should be down to the distributor, ok, but we arent apple, I would want to make it clear the choice was freedom for the user.

In that same token, its giving freedom to the user to go with Linux|GNU, thats extra freedom  it _should not_ be extra extra freedom along with it to the FSF to promote anything but the option of their offering. And i read into it they can be glad linux came along as an option. Linux isnt saying that its something totally to its own, but it sure as anything isnt a GNU. LNG^GNU inception

Edit: i thought about something, there isn't a label for POSIX-linux. Do we want to ship systemd and other suchlike linux only things?

 

[sebt3]

So the main remaining reasons not to apply would be:

• it takes time and effort to apply for the certification - I don't think it would take a lot of time and effort, and most of it could be "outsourced" to community members
• it restricts ED's use of terminology on the official website/cardboard box/documentation
• it restricts ED's options to sell non-free variants of the same device (since those would need a different name/packaging)

The main reasons to apply would be:

• more visibility/sales
• attract FOSS devs
• promote FOSS
• it's a way to say "thank you" to the FSF / GNU project

Your list are at best biased.

There are many more points to add to the "not apply" category :

- Will bring many floss zealots

- Will discourage joe typical user to buy (do you have an idea of what kind of impact a "hacker-friendly" sticker have on "normal" user ? they fly away faster then they come)

- Will generate a lot of useless flamewars around naming scheme like the one in this thread

- Limit the numbers of SOC ED could look at

- Will imper performance compared to closed-source drivers

- ....

As for your point for applying :

#1 is pipe dream as milkshake said

#2 is pipe dream : why do you think they will come for that but havent shown for pandora #1 ?

#3 and #4 so what ? FOSS wont be promoted on a "mario fan" device. Emulation make you work with closed source somewhere. That's impur for all the floss crew. And I dont want to say thank you to an organisation that want to get all the credit for every floss code writen while they might contribute at best for like 5% of the total floss code everywhere.

So in my opinion, the disadvantages far outweigh the advantages, but that is of course for ED to decide.

 

[_wb_]

When for example milkshake says

again I vote YES to FOSS where possible but NO to RYF certificate - do we all agree on this?

 
I think he actually means "the choice should be up to ED", which would put him in the "don't care" camp - or am I wrong?


If he actually means "NO" to the RYF certificate, as in "I wouldn't buy this if it has a RYF sticker, but I would if it doesn't - the RYF sticker decreases my perceived value of the device", then it is a different thing and I would expect to see some reasoning to explain that sentiment.

 
When I say "NO to RYF" I mean I would prefer it if the Pandora successor did NOT attempt to acquire the RYF certificate because of the restrictions it puts on freedom (as in speech).

But it does not put any restrictions on your freedom of speech. It does put restrictions on ED's freedom of speech - but to be fair, that is really just a loaded way to say something rather more trivial: he has to mention the words "GNU" and "Free Software" on the cardboard box and website, instead of just "Linux" and "Open Source". It doesn't mean he cannot say the words "Linux" or "Open Source", it does not mean all his letters will get censored by the stalinist political police, it does not mean his server gets locked behind a chinese firewall.


Anyway, I can understand it if ED does not want to "give up his freedom of speech", but let's be clear: it's only his freedom of speech we are talking about here (and only a rather trivial fragment of it), not that of anyone else.

The main reasons to apply would be:

• more visibility/sales
• attract FOSS devs
• promote FOSS
• it's a way to say "thank you" to the FSF / GNU project

In my opinion, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, but that is of course for ED to decide.

 
I think your first point of "more visibility/sales" is a little bit pipe dream. I would wager that the majority of people would actually care less about the RYF certification itself and as I mentioned in my reply above, if you take away eds freedom to advertise it how he sees fit then you would most likely (in my opinion) reduce sales and visibility simply because ed would be forced to disallow the promotion of non FOSS specific software / OS's.

Sure, when I say "more visibility/sales", it is really only among people who care about the FSF. Compared to the general public, that is probably a small niche. But the Pandora caters only to a small niche anyway, and the intersection of those two niches could be relatively significant.

As to taking away ED's freedom to advertise non-FOSS software, reducing sales: this would be a valid concern if it were true, but it is not. ED can still make videos of the device running non-FOSS software and put statements like "Runs GNU/Linux, Android, RISC OS, Windows 8, ..." (assuming all those actually run) on the website or cardboard box. The only thing he would not be allowed to do, is to for example sell the device specifically as a NDS clone (as if that is its only or main function), and ship it with DraStic, which is non-free. It's fine to say the device can run DraStic, to show videos of the device running DraStic, to put DraStic on the repo, but it's not fine to ship it with DraStic or to somehow give the impression that you need DraStic in order to be able to use the device (which would be the case if the device would be sold as a NDS clone). Assuming DraStic is still non-free by that time.

So I don't think the RYF requirements put any real restrictions on ED's advertisement options, or at least not to the extent that would reduce sales or visibility.

The second 2 points are valid and that would be nice.


The last point is neither here not there because not everyone cares to thank the FSF / GNU project (I'm not saying im one of those people, I'm just making a point) plus some people may choose to use use a distribution that  does not contain any GNU contributions.


I mean if we go that route then why don't we thanks the people that developed the first PCB technology or LCD technology while your at it?

So are you saying you cannot say "thank you" to someone/something unless you exhaustively thank anyone who ever did something you use or like?

Besides, we wouldn't only thank the FSF / GNU people, we would also thank the Linux developers by mentioning the name of the kernel, we would probably thank the distro maintainers by mentioning the name of whatever distro we're using, etc.

But it seems to me that the FSF / GNU project is a relatively important one to thank.

 

[Grench]

If the RYF certification were really, "just about the hardware," then there would be no restrictions against shipping the device with both free and non-free items included.  The RYF certification is from the FSF.  It is not a separate organization.

If the device included two partitions, one with 100% FOSS and another with closed source drivers & OS that does the same thing, it would fail RYF, despite having a FOSS alternative on the system.  The FSF insists on removing freedom of choice, contents and packaging in it's RYF certification.

It is not necessary to infringe on anyone's freedoms to ship a FOSS device.  Not ED's, not the end users.

It is required to infringe on freedom of speech, what can be included for software, how it can be labeled, etc... to ship a RYF device.

Sugar coat it all you want, but it's a very hard pill to swallow.

 

[frefol]

Personally, if we paid even a single penny (or whatever the smallest money is in your country) to the FSF, I would just not buy the P2.  I don't like how supporters of the FSF seem to put down non-supporters so frequently.  Like calling closed source software evil or illegitimate. 

 

[Exophase]

So, what about GNU/Linux? I get the point that you don't like to be told how to call something, but of course you still get to call it whatever you want. We are talking only about what's on the cardboard box and on the official website. Assuming we'll still want to use a GNU/Linux distro as the default firmware, are there any reasons why we should insist on being able to put the word "Linux" on the website and the cardboard box there without a reference to GNU?

I don't care if ED calls it GNU/Linux. But if he does I hope it's because that's what he thinks is the most appropriate name and not just to get RYF certification.

You say that the name is no big deal and they should just do it because it doesn't hurt anything. I don't disagree with this, but the argument bugs me. FSF's philosophy has always put ideology over pragmatism, but you're basically telling us we should embrace it because there's no practical harm even if the principle goes against what we think is acceptable (that RYF should be about furthering their agenda for something unrelated).

 

[notaz]

Knowing ED I'd say he just did it to have more people happy. Otherwise you get endless threads like this with discussions which lead to nothing.

 

[_jr_]

Personally, if we paid even a single penny (or whatever the smallest money is in your country) to the FSF, I would just not buy the P2. I don't like how supporters of the FSF seem to put down non-supporters so frequently. Like calling closed source software evil or illegitimate.

I'll buy two then


The promote and thanks aspects _wb_ mentioned are important to me and I'm prepared to pay a premium for that.

 

[Klumpen]

 

[sswam]

It's very reasonable and not objectionable to mention the words "GNU" and "Free Software" on the cardboard box and website.

We don't have to write "GNU/Linux" everywhere we mention Linux or GNU separately.  Just mention that Pandora runs a Linux kernel with GNU userland.

In any case, we should try for quality open source drivers. If we can achieve that, then it will be time to re-consider this RYF stuff.
It would certainly be worthwhile talking to the FSF about RYF requirements, after we achieving the free software drivers.

 

[Exophase]

But it doesn't run a GNU userland, it includes several non-GNU user programs and I don't see an argument that GNU somehow defines or represents them.

 

[_wb_]

But it doesn't run a GNU userland, it includes several non-GNU user programs and I don't see an argument that GNU somehow defines or represents them.

Not everything in userland is GNU, of course not. Not every line of code in the Linux kernel was written by Linus. Do you suggest we cannot call it "Linux" but should include the names of all other authors? LinuxAlancoxuxWeinehalluxPetersenuxBunkuxTarreauuxKleenuxGortmakeruxKroanHartmanuxetcetera? No, the name "Linux" is fine; it refers only to one author but that's OK because it is the one who got it all started and who probably contributed the most, especially in the crucial early years.

The same holds for GNU: they got it all started and they contributed the most.

 

[Neelix]

Except that a name actually doesn't need to give credit to an author or creator at all...   eg  the name  OpenPandora, does not directly reference any of the four original team members at all.   That's because it's not necessary for the name to do that.

- Neelix

 

[Exophase]

Not everything in userland is GNU, of course not. Not every line of code in the Linux kernel was written by Linus. Do you suggest we cannot call it "Linux" but should include the names of all other authors? LinuxAlancoxuxWeinehalluxPetersenuxBunkuxTarreauuxKleenuxGortmakeruxKroanHartmanuxetcetera? No, the name "Linux" is fine; it refers only to one author but that's OK because it is the one who got it all started and who probably contributed the most, especially in the crucial early years.

The same holds for GNU: they got it all started and they contributed the most.

Linus didn't name it Linux because he wanted everyone to stop and give him recognition. And I've never seen anyone claim that it should be called Linux so that Linus gets credit. He named it that because he wanted a name for his project. I'm sure the idea was to call it something that sounded like "Unix" and he went with a cute pun using his name. There has never been a dispute over what the kernel should be called. Most people are fine with the person who started a project getting to name it and don't insist on renaming it once a bunch of other people have contributed to it, since that's petty and pointless. When a name changes it's usually to signify a fork or to get around trademarks.

But GNU didn't get "the userspace" started at all - that's why too broad for anyone to lay claim to. GNU started as a project to do GPLed versions of a bunch of standard UNIX stuff. Stuff that was standard UNIX at the time, might I add - what constitutes as a typical userspace has changed a lot in the last 30 years. GNU doesn't deserve credit for a single thing that exists outside of GNU, to claim that GNU's example inspired every GPLed project would be insipid. GPL deserves maybe some credit for GPLed projects. But wanting it to the extent that it's in the name is preposterous. And it's moot because GNU isn't synonymous with GPL.

And I'd like to see some updated numbers with this "contributed the most" stuff, since the famous claims are now 10 years old and since then distros have grown a lot. Today those numbers are going to vary tremendously. How about Pandora that doesn't use GNOME? Or even moreso, one that doesn't use GTK+ at all? At any rate, if they contributed the most but it's still part of a diverse plurality then I don't think that can still be counted as representative.

 

[_wb_]

Most people are fine with the person who started a project getting to name it and don't insist on renaming it once a bunch of other people have contributed to it, since that's petty and pointless.

So who started the overall project (fully free OS, kernel+userspace+development tools) that I now prefer to call GNU/Linux, but which most people insist on calling just "Linux"? Linus Torvalds or Richard Stallman? Maybe we should call it Stallmanix after all, no?

It is the GNU project that started the whole movement to make a fully free OS. This was necessary because by then (early 80s), all popular OS'es had become proprietary (and quite expensive too). Of course the GNU project did not invent Free software - there has been public domain software from the very beginning of computing. But the lesson was learned that "public domain" was too weak as a license to avoid things to become proprietary in the long run. It is the GNU project that pointed this out and mostly solved the issue by inventing the GPL license.

Of course the GNU project inspired others (e.g. BSD, X) to become free as well.

To claim anything else is to rewrite history.

GNU is not synonymous with GPL, but as you know, it is called the GNU GPL because the GNU project designed the GPL license. Of course that does not mean that anything that uses the GPL license is directly inspired by the GNU project, but at least some of it is.

As to numbers on contribution sizes: I guess a lot depends on how you measure these things. I think it's fair to assign more weight to "core" components like the kernel, the C library, compilers, coreutils, binutils, the X server, the shell, standard libraries, etc. than to applications like The Gimp or LibreOffice. By any metric, I think it is clear that GNU is still the biggest single contributor, but of course the number of contributors has grown a lot.

However, my point is that we should not call it GNU/Linux because of the weight of the GNU code contributions, but because "GNU" is a clear reference to the goals of Free Software. If you just call it "Linux", it could as well be a tivo'ized locked-down Android; if you call it "GNU/Linux", you immediately know that it will be open, dev-friendly, malware-free.