Message: 2 Date: Sat, 6 Feb 2016 10:01:13 +0100 From: Fabio Pesari <[email protected]> To: Koz Ross <[email protected]>, Esteban Enrique <[email protected]> Cc: [email protected] Subject: Re: [libreplanet-discuss] Reverse Engineering Message-ID: <[email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252
On 02/06/2016 06:50 AM, Koz Ross wrote: > > With respect to Libreboot, no amount of reverse engineering will help - > the Intel ME is cryptographically signed, and no replacement we make > will ever run, full stop, unless Intel gives us the signing keys. While > I admire your desire to help, it's important to understand what *can* > and *can't* be helped - and this particular thing *can't* be helped. That's why I say we should build our computers from hardware components with libre designs. I think reverse engineering can be a waste of time, if what it achieves is being able to run free software on a single outdated, underpowered and out-of-production device after many months of research. That's my main criticism of Libreboot. Instead of freeing old boards, the community should focus on building its own. Yes, that's expensive and needs experts and it's more about hardware than software, but there is no "Free Hardware Foundation" and the free software community should be able to fund its own research just like corporations do. <SNIP> Actually there really can't be a "Free Hardware" movement in the same way there is a Free Software movement, since while 'bits are free, atoms cost money'... I believe I have even seen comments from RMS to this effect, though I don't have source offhand. Thus hardware by it's nature needs to be 'Open Source' - where the information needed to replicate a given device is available, but not necessarily the atoms to do so... There is also the problem of at what level one goes to make the hardware - most of us aren't going to build our own electronic components, dig ore out of the ground and make metal, etc... That said, there is the Open Source Hardware Association http://www.oshwa.org/ that does in some ways try to do the equivalent of the FSF... There are also significant "I.P." differences in the way hardware and software are treated, mostly revolving around the concept that the primary protection on software is copyright, and on hardware is patents, so 'copyleft' is not really relevant, and there isn't an equivalent in hardware. ART ------------------ Arthur Torrey - <[email protected]> -------------------
