Hello, On 12/01/2015 08:29 AM, Michael Lamb wrote: > Today, the C.H.I.P. $9 single-board computer was released to the public for > pre-order. > > A page on the FSF's website categorizes this board under "boards with > serious flaws (for respecting your freedom)." It claims that the GPU, VPU, > and WiFi chip require non-free code or binary blobs to work. This is > common, and is even worse for the other single-board computer that recently > made headlines, the Raspberry Pi Zero. > https://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/single-board-computers
??? I think that Raspberry Pi Zero has B2835, which requires non-free software to boot. So, it is categorized as "Single-board computers with fatal flaws". I think that CHIP is not worse than that. Suppose I want to share/distribute my micro-SD card among its users (with all Free Software, except the binary blob). I will need to install the binary blob in each micro-SD card to let it boot, and this is inevitable for Raspberry Pi ZERO, original Pi, and Pi 2. I would say, this practice encourages people to take it granted (it == the control by manufacturer). This is not acceptable for me. Please correct me if I'm wrong, my knowledge would be outdated. > Does anyone have any more details about this hardware, and whether it is as > "open source" (and hopefully freedom-respecting) as its twitter account > claims it to be? I think that the FSF page is relevant for CHIP (as of today). CHIP would not be acceptable (from the viewpoint of freedom-respecting computer) when you want to use its GPU and video encoder/decoder with full features. I don't have information of WiFi and Bluetooth hardware of CHIP. If it were freedom-respecting computer, the information for WiFi chip would be available to public or its (potential) users. On the other hand, the community (to pursue freedom-respecting computer) for Allwinner SoC is active, see: http://sunxi.org/ Thanks to the community, I can now let my board (of Allwinner H3) boot successfully with no binary blob. While I don't like to refer a project at GitHub, here is a link to GitHub (please watch out JavaScript from GitHub for your free computing): https://github.com/linux-sunxi Looking the repositories of sunxi community, we can see a concrete example: how non-free software is still required for its GPU (despite ARM or other companies claims "Open Source", it seems to mean only kernel drivers, not as a whole system) and how video features are limited when we want free computing. When we don't use GPU and video, a board with Allwinner SoC could be a good computer. So, it depends if it's serious flaw or not. --
