Steam isnt on ARM, or MIPS. Thats the kind of power i dont want to give a 3rd party. They make it so that they can break it. So thats that. And speaking of architectures, the X86 people are the worst, even get to me sometimes.
How is non non-free hardware going to ever going sour on anyone? Its not like it changes, so that certificate cant be revoked. Lets say we make a version 2.1 and there is a global shortage on the parts in the original version. We could at that point _not_ put the fsf approved on the box. We are that capable.
I dont really know what to call it, closed firmware encumbered hardware maybe? It isnt open hardware just because its non-nonfree, because open hardware means the schematics/gerber files etc are open so you can reproduce and modify the hardware. That is patent law, which isnt copyright. And lets not get into software patents.
As for shipping a FSF approved distro, I dont know, id say ship debian and take it from there. Any freedom is good freedom, but dont throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Debian is huge, its rock solid, and its what most custom distros are built atop. Since the base is stable that usually means newer software and GUI things.
How much non-free do we have? Its those games the gwc-guys put on there, then the drastic, and kami retro. The latter two are community centric, and paid for, so if its about money lets buy them and have them be pay as much as you like or whatever the creators see fit. Its not like you cant steal proprietary software either, so just because you can compile it from a sourcecode people will still buy it, just as much as they wont steal the closed binary. Im going to go on a limb here and guess that not every rom-dump for those emulators is within realms of legality.
I say lets set sight at shipping stock debian, it makes sense to tailor make the packages to the hardware, not a generic install, which isnt a problem unless you would add on external wifi, but if the internal one is flawless, it isnt a prevalent usercase scenario. Besides, there are free options etc etc. So once the hardware is free, the software is free, which the argument of saving space on nand takes care of before you get into morality.
I see the effect of having a certification possibly revoked, so maybe that part should be unofficial. In my head it plays out like a 50s propaganda scenario^^. Every time you give users freedom, you are working for the FSF! Must read up on what that requires and how it works out though. Good thing we have wb for research. Maybe we could discuss it with them come to some sort of agreement. We dont exactly have a device that qualifies to put a certification on right now, so we could discuss and research for future endavours.
The FSF doesnt troll people who do good, they recently did a fundraiser for replicant i noticed, so they can be very nice. Replicant is a free android distro. They make sure the telephony stack is free and that the modem doesnt control the SoC and that they dont share memory. Plus stripping the google mandatory behinds the scenes usage survey and the google apps. Then there is GPS, camera, which needs firmware. I only lurk, but ive understood qualcomm is bad once you get LTE modem. So thats why i dont like the snapdragon 800, its fast and the adreno 330(?) is splendor, is has the second best drivers with lima being the best.
Etna_viv is the one for the gwc-zero graphics, but that isnt so widespread, and its not the fastest, and its not the most working freedriver. A
free driver for the SGX powerVR (like what is in the pandora now) is a high priority FSF project.
Edit: Proprietary anything obviously isnt the way to go, but the question is how far to go to avoid it. There are a limitless number of players that ship android gaming centric devices, and most of them shit on freedom for the sake of convenience. Maybe going with freedom for freedoms case can be a benefit rather than going the way of convenience. I think the benefit of having a involved community that makes it
our device is most important. In that respect we need as close as we can get.
TL;DR Since not having defective by design hardware was convenient and everyone got along, lets see where the software question is in practice. What closed source things are there, and what are the alternatives? Maybe we can switch the board software to phpBB or something that works well. Maybe do openstreetmap for the member map. Stop documenting good-old-games on the wiki? Im having trouble finding _real_ issues in the sense that they are insurmountable or that i care for the sake of freedom. The forum is a real issue for me, and it takes a bit of effort to change, is that the "problem"?
