"Respects Your Freedom" certification?

[ZXDunny]

The "problem" would be if FSF think that mentioning a non-free repo on the official website is equal to "recommending" it.

Given what I've seen of the attitude of pro-free folks out there (the ones that are likely to inhabit the FSF) towards non-free software, this is my biggest worry.

I mean, we've all seen how rabid they get even in a small community like ours.

D.

 

[Exophase]

This does make it seem like FSF might not be happy giving the certification, or that it at least skirts the edges. What would be really awful is if they gave it initially then changed their mind.

I'm a big fan of helping people think for themselves. I think that the device should strive to be as free as possible so long as it doesn't compromise other design elements in a major way, and should make it as straightforward as possible to keep it free without any risk of accidentally having proprietary software on the device. Then be as clear as possible and educate buyers so they can figure out whether or not the device is compatible their own personal needs and ideals. If they're only interested in FSF's certification then it sounds like they don't want to have to think about it or research it themselves, and are putting full trust in someone else's opinion.

 

[xiongxioi]

This does make it seem like FSF might not be happy giving the certification, or that it at least skirts the edges. What would be really awful is if they gave it initially then changed their mind.

who knows what these FSF guys will become once they are widely recognized.

Remember google's don't be evil? It was a good company back then, but it has turned into one of the prime evils.

I would not view these people as some freedom fighters and the last piece of the puzzle that once finished will save humanity forever and such.

But, I would be honest that most people do not think. They won't even interested in FSF's certificate unless they are a member of that. They only join something when they here good things about it from some sources. May it be friends, or co-worker, or some internet superstar. Thus,  unless people are butt @%^$ by microsoft and apple so hard to the point they wake up, and realise the evil within these beasts, they won't actively looking for open sourced tuts.

I don't think there are many people like you, Exo, who is always in dire need of truth and knowledge. Even most engineers doesn't behave that way. (I know a lot of guys that are working as engineers, but thinking like technicians) Let along commoners who spent most their time surfing the internet or watching family guy and the simpsons on their butt while eating meat lover pizzas with a 1.5L mountain dew on their side.

 

[_wb_]

The FSF already exists for decades and already is widely recognized in the relevant community for a long time. Yes, most people would not care about an FSF endorsement, but then again, "most people" are not people of the caliber of a notaz or an Exophase in terms of coding/hacking skills.

As for the FSF distro criteria: yes, they're pretty harsh in the sense that most of the popular distros like Ubuntu or even Debian don't qualify. It makes sense though to not endorse as being "Free" a collection of software that includes non-free software. These are however not the criteria that are applied in the "Respects Your Freedom" certification; for that, it suffices that you can run a Free distro, and that what is shipped with the device is Free software. The repo, even if it is hosted by ED and linked from the Pandora successor website, is clearly a repository of third-party software that is not necessarily endorsed or  recommended by the hardware vendor: heck, everyone can make an account there and upload anything. I doubt the FSF would have an issue with that. It would of course be different if we would try to get the repo (or rather firmware+repo) endorsed as being a Free GNU/Linux distro, which it obviously is not.

 

[comradekingu]

Ok, so instead of trying to construct a blacklist of what the FSF isnt by guesswork, lets instead try to make a white-list with only the information that makes sense, no spurious conspiracies.

Its not about a certificate, its not about the FSF. Its about free as in freedom, and i guess we can all get along there. The freedom we do have is standing on the shoulders of giants. The freedom is a goal in itself, freedom is not convenience. Its easy to understand that there was no freedom to install BSD this time around, but only easy because it would have been more conveniently easy. Artificial limitations are by deduction of logic then inherently evil, and in the sense of freedom, proprietary software is exactly that. (Allow me to interject here, bear with me, and you will see why, we get into that now.)

It doesnt have to be spying, it doesn't have to actively hide from anyone, in theory it could be just a limitation over what freedom is at stake, namely the freedom to do what you want.

• The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
• The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
• The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
• The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

In essence this is the Linux community, you could call it a GNU community, but one is practice the other is theory. Philosophically its all the same. And that is accurate enough to get onwards;

Open source is a buzzword, but it holds no water. In effect you could have the source be open, but not have it be free (respect the above freedoms)

That is why FSF seems overly pedantic and negative, why they seem to be lashing out at their own community.

The four freedoms enable freedom, but they also protect it, it holds up in court.

Ask yourself this, can you be free without encryption, yes, sure, but information will be syndicated, it can want to stay free all it likes.

The limits to this is your viewpoint, sure you could think that you have nothing to hide, but that mindset is a goldmine for the wrong people. If you give those people access now then they have that information, forever. We live in a very free society, and its easy to be complacent about life and death issues. In that respect lets say things were to change, would we then need to do something about it? That is like basing you whole food supply on chinas ability to produce and willingness to sell. Inevitably that fails one day, then its your problem. Knowledge is power.   

Does it make sense to fight the evils of the world, or do we say this is what we want, this is how we want it.

(In my opinion this boils down to how naïve you are willing to make the argument. In practice evils already exists and if you are like me, you think that is because nobody was there to defend their freedom. Evil isn't an accident, nor is freedom by extention of that.)

But sans the tinfoil hat, in the western world what we have to worry about is data mining, spying. Prism. EUs data directive, etc. Even from the governments downwards, everyone does it. All the "free" services are free as in lunch, there is a catch to it. If you knew how many databases you were in you would question the intent, because why isnt that just theoretical, it was easier to think of it as theoretical.

Sidenote:

The difference between the raspberry pi getting total praise was that it has a closed source blob in the graphics, only the maintainable parts show.

Also it had a blob in the bootloader that the computer doesnt start without. This may seem like semantics, but its the rain that ruined the parade. Raspberry pi put computers in the hands of millions, at a price you could afford to thinker with it.

 

[WizardStan]

All that appears to be problematic with the P1 getting RYF certification is the binary blob for the GPU. If this is true then I absolutely endorse at least attempting to get certification with any theoretical P2, not because I think the certification itself will be useful but because it is an additional variable to consider when choosing a SoC: when comparing options, if one of the possibilities has free and open GPU drivers then that is definitely a positive, as proven by the amount of trouble we've had with the P1's driver and the absolute lack of support from TI. Whether the positive of a free and open driver balances against any con (lower speed or ram, for example?) will only be known when it comes time to actually do the comparison, but for now I see no reason to flat out reject the idea and every reason to at least keep it in consideration for the future.

 

[moxie]

Reasonable enough

 

[thatgui]

But wouldn't that be hipocritical ? In one hand I am holding the certificate and in the other I have a officially supported software repository with half of the software in it beeing not "spiritually" compatible with that certificate. With the certificate probably beeing interesting only to a certain group of people, they may come to the same conclusion, or not ?

The importance of the certification is that the device can function as advertised using entirely "free" software. The fact that it can also run non-free software actually makes it even more "free". The hypocrisy would be in saying that it is not allowed to run non-free software as that would be a restriction on the rights of the users. As long as it doesn't NEED non-free software in order to function as intended (with some exceptions, even) then it passes their certification.

That wasn't what I wanted to hint at:

I assume that this certification will only attract a certain kind of user, which will probably have a clear view of what is a free or not. With the "free software" discussion usually ending up in boiling mess, I'm just wondering wether we will do more harm than good to the project, independent of the specific technicalities that are involved in the certification process.

 

[_wb_]

So you're afraid that getting the RYF certification will result in attracting "Stallman-type zealots" who will spoil our precious forums with their drama and flamewars about software licenses?

And why exactly would that be worse than attracting clueless Windows users who spoil our precious forums with their drama and flamewars about their own technical illiteracy?

 

[ekianjo]

So you're afraid that getting the RYF certification will result in attracting "Stallman-type zealots" who will spoil our precious forums with their drama and flamewars about software licenses?

There are not that many out there, so the risk is low, I guess. 

 

[thatgui]

So you're afraid that getting the RYF certification will result in attracting "Stallman-type zealots" who will spoil our precious forums with their drama and flamewars about software licenses?

I'm not afraid, I'm just wondering about the outcome. And the way you worded your answer, looks to me as this could be something that backfires:While the most part of free software enthusiasts will surely be relaxed about that topic, there maybe some stubborn/"mister know it all" - type guys like me that (albait the P2 did technically pass the certification) think that they need to be more missionary about the Pandoras "license garden" thus (possibly) offending devs that won't like that. Or even trying to make a big fuss about the OP Team beeing hyprocrits by having the certificate but allowing non free software on their main(/only) software distribution channel. In turn creating a negative feedback in their circles.

Just to make this clear, I'm not talking about wether the Pandora is able to get this certificate, its just about peoples perception - look at this thread, most people are confused what it actually means to get and keep hold on this certificate.

So the bottom line is, will this effort create more potential new customers that it possibly (no certainty here) offends due to passion respectvily "avoids" due to advertisment restrains (as far as I did understand it - please, correct me if I'm wrong - Ed would not be allowed, to advertise Drastic, the moment DesmuME gets into the repo) - or restrains regarding SoC options.

And why exactly would that be worse than attracting clueless Windows users who spoil our precious forums with their drama and flamewars about their own technical illiteracy?

I doubt that the P2 will attract more "clueless Windows users" than the P1 already does, or are there any reasons to believe otherwise ?

 

[_wb_]

As far as I'm concerned, the RYF certification wouldn't necessarily be about making the product more attractive in order to get more customers - there are probably better ways to do that. It would be about doing the Right Thing and maybe about attracting a handful very talented devs like notaz. E.g. if we could get some of the current maintainers of the existing 100% Free GNU/Linux distros interested in the Pandora successor, we might end up with a more robust and better maintained "firmware" than what is possible now with the limited number of people who are interested in that.

The kind of community the P2 will attract will depend mostly on how the P2 will position itself: will it be a deluxe gaming handheld where devs should focus on fool-proofing the interfaces (or even just switch to Android) and where users should be mostly passive consumers who don't need the freedom to do anything but to run binaries? Or will it be a high-end dev-friendly miniature laptop with cool built-in controls that has a thriving community around it in which tinkering with and improving the software is encouraged?

 

[sebt3]

Or will it be a high-end dev-friendly miniature laptop with cool built-in controls that has a thriving community around it in which tinkering with and improving the software is encouraged?

Nice description of the current Pandora. Yet, while improving the software is largely encouraged, how many have done that in the past years ?Notaz, DjWillis and aTc. Freamon joined the game a few weeks ago. That's not much in 3 years. Just about 1 per year. Yeah. I dont see a FSF logo changing that

 

[thatgui]

As far as I'm concerned, the RYF certification wouldn't necessarily be about making the product more attractive in order to get more customers - there are probably better ways to do that. It would be about doing the Right Thing and maybe about attracting a handful very talented devs like notaz. E.g. if we could get some of the current maintainers of the existing 100% Free GNU/Linux distros interested in the Pandora successor, we might end up with a more robust and better maintained "firmware" than what is possible now with the limited number of people who are interested in that.

I have no real inside on how "free software guys" are ticking, but how big can the motivation to invest a large portion of ones lifetime into a project be, if everything that seperates it from countless other projects is that it has a FSF sticker on it ?

The kind of community the P2 will attract will depend mostly on how the P2 will position itself: will it be a deluxe gaming handheld where devs should focus on fool-proofing the interfaces (or even just switch to Android) and where users should be mostly passive consumers who don't need the freedom to do anything but to run binaries? Or will it be a high-end dev-friendly miniature laptop with cool built-in controls that has a thriving community around it in which tinkering with and improving the software is encouraged?

I guess, with Ed steering the ship, the ever growing competition (smartphones, tablets, wireless controllers, etc.) and with the user experience beeing anything else than foolproof (Pandoras software did improve immensly, no doubt about it), we can safely assume the your first option will definately never happen. But I can't say that I fully understand why you are bringing this up in this context - software development for the Pandora is something you can't control directly, it just happens. You can improve the circumstances somewhat (ready to use development environment, friendly helpfull community, etc) to be more attractive, but exceptional devs like notaz, exo, mcobit, ptitseb, sebt, yourself ect. sure have "deeper" motives why they are still around / invested some much work into this than certificates.
So I would say, try to encourage to adhere to the certification standards, both hardware and software wise, but skip on whole certification thing, if it could turn out as a drawback in some aspect. It's still the right thing as it progresses the Pandora toward the ideals of "free software", but nobody has to go overboard in the process.

 

[ekianjo]

It would be about doing the Right Thing and maybe about attracting a handful very talented devs like notaz.

I think the key question back to you _wb_ is, why don't we already see Free Software Evangelists porting stuff on Pandora since it's already by far one of the most open platforms out there (even compared to some laptops you buy anywhere) ?

So, unless you have a good insight on how to explain the lack of these people, I don't see why an additional certification will make them come either.

 

[levi]

@comradekingu TL;DR, but I did get as far as your list of freedoms. AIUI the GPL and the FSF only care about source distributions - if you have the source you can build the binary, so all of the other 'freedoms' come from free redistribution of source and licensing of derivative works.


As for getting the Pandora certified, wouldn't the (optional, but strongly recommended) codec pack be a bigger issue than the repo?

 

[comradekingu]

Attracting FSF people is much to the effect of attracting me, im an FSF member. (dun dun) Im not sure thats the only upside (if you will) but i think a certification is also going to educate users, which i guess the certification is good for.

I cant really put myself into "100% free you say?, - nosale.jpg i wanted to not be able to run the kernel i like or the OS i like, this is too much freedom, i cant handle that much"

Again, its not about a certification, its not about a sticker or not. FSF, BSD, Solaris etc- people WILL read up on things to avoid, and they are knowledgeable. So long as its 100% its not like they are going to be shaking their fists. They get agressive if you try to spy on them though.  But its not for them, its for us. A 100% free as in freedom hardware device makes sense and its good for _us_.

Levi

Yes, you got the idea. The GPL-license is strict on that last point of keeping derivative works free, because it requires that you keep it GPL so that others have the same freedom.

There is much discussion about this, the BSD doesnt have that last point, and they say its restricting freedom. Since open source is a buzzword and people grasp it. Worthy of note is that open source (you can look at it) does not mean free (change it etc) , but the distinction isnt made clear by the 'Open Source' vs hopelessly bad 'Free-Software' slogan, since you basically have to specify it (free as in freedom, not as in gratis.) Also it sounds very similar to freeware (which you don't want to be lumped in with, especially if you are the FSF) There is also libre-software, (like libre-office) which is the same idea, but more clear language-wise. Some people say "libre" is tainted with connotations to liberache, etc. But i guess thats as close you get to making sense in english.

Nonfree codec packs are getting less and less relevant thankfully. The latest firefox has H.264 decoding (so you dont need flash for html5-beta youtube), and FLAC has long since taken over for mp3.

Ogg is big on online audio, and opus is coming for streaming (speex is already the major codec

However, i am not of the opinion of saying going man overboard is the way to go. I use Debian myself. I very rarely have the non-free repo enabled, that comes down to my choice, which is fine, you have yours. When its not, its usually because I'm without a viable choice for things like graphic drivers, (AMD graphics, which i dont have myself) Then again, i have much respect for making a 100% free distro, and I try to help out gNewSense with that. I will try to explain the difference. Debian is fully open, and you have all the freedoms. In the sense that windows is not. If you put restricted-codecs and adobe flashplugin-nonfree on top of debian by default (which is allowed if you have some non repository hackery to pull it down) Some distros do that, which is just plain dumb since just having seperate repos is clean and you dont really need those nowadays anyway. Give or take it isnt the biggest difference, but there is alot of noise about it because those who do it are mostly rolling a distro (there are too many generic distros, that difference is not enough to validate making another) off the work of others and then shaming their ideals.

There arises the GNU/Linux GNU+Linux issue, which is saying linux couldnt be made without the gnu tools to make it, and that linux is only the kernel in the GNU operating system (which can have different kernels) You can get GNU/Debian with hurd, BSD or Linux kernel. Saying linux is only the kernel is correct technically, but its very meh in terms of pissing off people by inviting yourself to prefix their name. FSF is terribad at changing language, and they should have more PR people that go about doing things in a non hostile way. Sometimes its good to self promote instead of attacking. Problem being people use GPL software _every day_ and they dont know. I think for example the pandora should be helpful in educating people since we got so much stuff from FSF and others. Its about giving back i suppose. Carrying a certification is good publisity for all parties. Though the FSF would certify it anyways and the most hardcore people would find it anyway. Its about regular users, and we should be nice if they are inqusitive about what the difference is. Like focusing on that the freedom alternatives are better. (in a non zealous way) I like to help people. You arent helping anyone if they think you are trying to attack them.

Note: Adobe has stopped supporting flash on linux, and they are moving away from it. (it is, has always been, and will remain until it dies, a security risk) I think they acknowledged they will never be able to fix it. Kill it with fire I say.

Then you can do things like removing the binary blobs that are needed for loading some wifi cards, remove anything that reccomends non-free plugins to itself etc etc. You end up with a 100% free fsf distro. I think if that closed blob was on the actual hardware it would be ok with FSF, but i dont know, i dont understand that part. Maybe it applies to only things that cant reasonably spy on you, like nubs. The tool you need for the pandora nubs calibration is expensive, dont know if it matters if that device is open, but then again, it doesn't matter much.

Some companies try to leverage this effect though, as they ship GPL software, supply the source as per required, but then they make it complex to actually change it. That is one of the key differences in the GPLv3. Some software is GPLv2 (the linux kernel of note), some is GPLv3, another noisefield. Again, i dont care to be aspbergers about it, i just think people should change to v3 to prevent it, which i guess is what will happen over time via approximation or updates of projects. The world isnt perfect, and when you have to base things on legality and court copyleft at the end of the day is based on copyright.

A non-free component i curse a lot is this forum software, because it does not work well. IPboard is an enemy of my sanity! Would be a good riddance of it to merge the content over to something else. In practice fri software is just better for forums.  (but i still use it, evidently) Hey, i even joined the botnet and willfully added myself to the (google) member map. It was optional.

All the FSF topics that generate noise are described above. Kicking upwards, downwards, getting kicked. But FSF is not us, so i guess the flamewar isnt our concern.

 

[levi]

Well, if you're trying to spread 'Gnusense' then you probably shouldn't go around saying things like:

In essence this is the Linux community, you could call it a GNU community, but one is practice the other is theory. Philosophically its all the same. And that is accurate enough to get onwards

I'd have said GCC was a pretty practical bit of software.  Linux is just a kernel (although the GNU guys have been pretty spectacularly bad at focussing on a kernel tech for long enough to code up a usable kernel so far to be fair).

Out of interest, why's Debian not certified?  They go to some lengths to keep patented software on an alternate host, presumably hosted by someone independent.

 

[_wb_]

It would be about doing the Right Thing and maybe about attracting a handful very talented devs like notaz.

I think the key question back to you _wb_ is, why don't we already see Free Software Evangelists porting stuff on Pandora since it's already by far one of the most open platforms out there (even compared to some laptops you buy anywhere) ?

So, unless you have a good insight on how to explain the lack of these people, I don't see why an additional certification will make them come either.

But there are already plenty of Free Software enthusiasts in the Pandora community, porting and developing software for the Pandora. I can't speak for others, but I would certainly include myself as one of them. Most likely people like Linux-SWAT, notaz, p'titSeb etc are also quite fond of the Free Software movement (or at least the Open Source movement), and you're probably right that it's exactly the openness of the platform that attracted them.

I don't think getting the certificate or not is that important, the only effect of the certificate would be educational. But I think satisfying the main requirements of the certification (in particular, not having binary blob drivers) would be an advantage and Good Thing in itself, independently of whether we can or want to use the "RYF" label or not.

So yes, of course I agree with Exophase and others when they say that people should think for themselves and the certificate label in itself is not important. But it is important to have as one of the design considerations the goal that we get hardware that "respects our freedom" (with our without a nice label that says it does).

Out of interest, why's Debian not certified?  They go to some lengths to keep patented software on an alternate host, presumably hosted by someone independent.

The "Respects Your Freedom" certification is aimed at hardware. Debian is not hardware.

 

[KickAss]

Yet, while improving the software is largely encouraged, how many have done that in the past years ?Notaz, DjWillis and aTc. Freamon joined the game a few weeks ago. That's not much in 3 years. Just about 1 per year. Yeah. I dont see a FSF logo changing that

we possibly could have achieved more in 3 years if we had had this very discussion 3 years ago.
_this_ is a good thing. ryf certification is a bonus (as said so many times before already). not a must have. it can help. the pandora lacks popularity. massively. and thats okay, because it is a niche product. but if you want to run a business with it, you better get as many of em sold as you can. ryf certification will probably not help much with that, but it's appealing to ppl who are interested in the device already. and yes, i do believe that it can
help to get capable devs onboard. and isnt that what we all want?

srsly, if we can achieve this, i dont see any downside to it (apart from needed initial preparations).