On 05/04/16 13:42, Paul Boddie wrote: > On Tuesday 5. April 2016 10.20.49 Daniel Pocock wrote: >> On 04/04/16 18:42, Tobias Platen wrote: >>> Half a year ago I baught a libreboot machine from Minifree, which >>> is now my main computer. I own several ARM based computers, with >>> processors from Texas Instruments and Allwinner, which I use for >>> various other tasks. I'm also interested in PowerPC, as a >>> replacement for Intel. Ive heard about a PowerPC notebook[1] as a >>> community effort. >> >> This type of practical feedback and action is really underestimated >> >> If every serious free software developer and user goes out and buys at >> least one piece of genuinely free hardware and tries to use it for >> some aspect of what we do then it will make us much more conscious of >> the fact that these platforms need to be supported seriously, even if >> we aren't explicitly things developing for them. > > Agreed. I'm fed up of hearing about people who "must" have a MacBook (or > whatever they're called) because of their supposed reliability or > friendliness > to Free Software, or because those people think it runs a "good enough > version > of Unix", as they then go and install all the GNU tools, anyway, after > eventually discovering what everyone who had to use proprietary Unix a decade > or two ago already knew. > >> The question is, can we make a shortlist of devices that people should >> consider buying? Such a shortlist would probably consider: >> >> - price and value for money >> >> - suitability for specific tasks (e.g. compiling, making >> presentations, watching movies, office work) >> >> - warranty and servicing issues, e.g. for laptops >> - can the battery be replaced, >> - how easy is it to get it fixed or replaced >> at short notice if it fails while traveling >> to a conference >> >> - which distributions are supporting the device seriously and how many >> other developers already have something similar, does it have critical >> mass >> >> Collating these details for various products in each category (e.g. >> laptop, workstation, home server, embedded development board) will >> make it much easier for people to overcome whatever inertia keeps them >> from acquiring free hardware. > > This kind of thing is a lot of work. We tried to collect a list of hardware > vendors on the wiki: > > http://wiki.fsfe.org/Migrated/Hardware Vendors > > (Everything on the wiki has been moved around, so links may need to be > followed via error pages.) > > And there wasn't an attempt to catalogue the details, either. Really, it was > enough work just tracking whether the companies offering stuff were still > doing so or were even still trading at all. >
Thanks for that feedback. It doesn't need to be a list of every possible option. Showing at least one or two suitable options and the criteria used to evaluate them gives people confidence to buy them. >> Going beyond that, finding a way to gift such devices to free software >> developers could create even more momentum around support for free >> hardware. > > I would rather Free Software developers came to their senses and made the > right purchasing decisions than have them getting presents that they probably > don't want and which end up lying around unused (or sold on, if various > device > developer programmes are any indication). > That is a generalization If you give 1,000 laptops with genuinely free hardware to developers, I suspect some of those will appear on eBay but definitely not all of them. Some would be put to good use: if just 20% of the recipients did something serious with the device, it may compensate for the cost of the laptops "wasted" on the other 80% of developers. By way of analogy, I've heard that the infantry has to shoot 8,000 bullets for every 1 enemy they kill. Regards, Daniel _______________________________________________ Discussion mailing list [email protected] https://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion
