On 10/26/2013 1:02 AM, Richard Quirk wrote:
On 10/26/13, Bradley D. Thornton <[email protected]> wrote:
We can keep hoping though, can't we? Think Raspberry Pi, right? :)
You might not have read this, it seems the Raspberry Pi has some big
freedom problems too.
https://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/single-board-computers
Yes that is really unfortunate. But it's really nothing we haven't been
subject to, on pretty much all machines anyway, at least historically
speaking.
I too would like to see a bootstrap that is completely free, but even
Linux running on an old 486 DX2-66 required an AMI or Phoenix BIOS
before the MBR or Lilo were ever consulted ;)
Things will improve, I am confident, they almost always do, but the FOSS
community can only engage in reactive development for somethings, since,
as proactive as we would like to be, we must actually wait until
something is prototyped or the SDK is available - some kind of specs
released, before we can go to town and produce a free solution :)
"""
The Raspberry Pi requires nonfree software to start up. It can't reach
the point of executing free software unless this nonfree program is
part of the installed system software.
The startup program is, in fact, the same program that runs the GPU
and the video decoding hardware. Thus, the GPU and the video decoding
hardware are unusable in the free world, but these jobs can be done
with free software on the CPU.
That program appears to implement intentional restrictions, such as
blocking the video decoding hardware for MPEG-2 and VC-1 in the
absence of a key that is specific to the machine in hand.
"""
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