Re: [libreplanet-discuss] [Dev] Misleading information in EOMA68 news

2016-08-24 Thread Christopher Waid 

On 2016-08-24 06:25 AM, Paul Kocialkowski wrote:

Le mardi 23 août 2016 à 11:24 -0300, Adonay Felipe Nogueira a écrit :
Just now, I **have** subscribed to Parabola's dev mailing list. So 
I'll

try to catch-up with this topic. :)

I'm inserting libreplanet-discuss and trisquel-users mailing lists as
recipients of this email because of my opinion on Tiberiu-Cezar
Tehnoetic's message
().

I'm also inserting a member of ThinkPenguin as recipient so as to let
him know the issue found by Tiberiu-Cezar Tehnoetic, which is 
discussed

furthermore in this email.

I agree with Paul Kocialkowski's original message
().
Furthermore, my **last** edit in the original pad
() is 
perhaps

the most correct one (if the timeslider references don't change over
time, it should be
, 
saved July 24th, 2016. After this version, the misleading text gets 
added).


Feel free to contribute to the revision pad:
https://pad.partidopirata.com.ar/p/parabola-eoma

Others: what do you think of this version? Please acknowledge when you 
think

it's ready. At this point, revision 310 suits me fine:
https://pad.partidopirata.com.ar/p/parabola-eoma/timeslider#310

However, I would gladly skip the part following "However, it's 
important to note
that:". Providing details there seems like a very slippery slope and 
I'd rather
link to relevant posts or information from the campaign page. Better 
yet,

quoting parts from there would be even more appropriate.

For instance, "2D and video acceleration work well with free software", 
while
being true, is not precise enough to be a really useful information. 
Also, the
part about the circuit board is too vague, since only the EOMA68 card 
(and not

the landing board or laptop board) were said to be withheld.


About Tiberiu-Cezar Tehnoetic's message
():
Indeed, the use of "free software friendly" to also mean "fully free
software" or "freedom-respecting" is a communication noise (article on
Wikipedia: ).
Basically, in context of marketing (not sales), a communication noise
happens when **either** the senders or receivers of a message
distort-or-misunderstand the message.

Besides, I'm inserting a member of ThinkPenguin as recipient of this
email so as to let him know the issue that Tiberiu-Cezar Tehnoetic 
found
in ThinkPenguin's website content. This was done so as to make it 
easier

for ThinkPenguin to see the issue. This **is not** meant to be taken
offensively.


They may agree that it's an issue or not. I don't think it is one.
For the record, you're probably referring to "Company #2" from:
https://lists.parabola.nu/pipermail/dev/2016-August/004353.html


If the world were perfect I might fix this imperfection immediately. 
Every small fix takes time though and time is not something we have. We 
can't afford to waste it on minor issues. We have many many small issues 
yet to deal with after eight years and many many much bigger issues. If 
it took a fine tooth comb to find an issue it's probably not worth 
dealing with [immediately].


When this text was written LibreBoot didn't exist and I was probably the 
only person who had even looked into the possibility of porting CoreBoot 
to newer systems or free'ing it [this was around 2009]. It also was the 
case that all the core components [chipsets, like wifi, graphics, etc] 
were free so within the context of the day it was adequately describing 
I think, even if not a perfect choice of words to the extant that 
anybody else would have understood them.


When I say big issues I'm talking about things like getting sources 
released for newer CPUs/SOCs, reverse engineering components, targeting 
the FCC so we can overcome restrictions on the release of and ability to 
get code [in practice], designing new hardware, etc.


If you understand and think about the underlying issues and start nit 
picking you'd quickly realize not only are we imperfect, but so is the 
wording on every other site. We still don't have any free laptops. 
Utilizing the word free to describe almost any laptop would be 
technically wrong [including systems with LibreBoot]. I can think of one 
exception and that is the Ben NanoNote [if this even counts as a laptop, 
I wouldn't call it that]. The next best thing is going to be the Libre 
Tea Computer Card when combined with the related laptop housing 
components [also free] and that's only happening because we've been 
sponsoring its development and working with Luke on it for years. Why 
this is better is because we have the complete set of code for numerous 
components including microcode, keyboard/LCD controller firmware, 
bootloader, and more... so

Re: [libreplanet-discuss] [Dev] Misleading information in EOMA68 news

2016-08-24 Thread Tiberiu-Cezar Tehnoetic 
On 24.08.2016 20:18, Christopher Waid wrote:
> When this text was written LibreBoot didn't exist

I beg to differ. The text we refer to is from summer 2014 after
SouthEast GNU/Linux Fest 2014 took place on June 20-22, 2014.

https://www.thinkpenguin.com/gnu-linux/short-interview-christopher-waid-about-thinkpenguin-linux-action-show

While FSF awarded the RYF certification to Gluglug for the X60 laptop
preinstalled with deblobbed Coreboot in December 2013.

http://www.fsf.org/news/gluglug-x60-laptop-now-certified-to-respect-your-freedom

And the deblobbed Coreboot has been named Libreboot "during early 2014".
That is, before the summer conference and show edition.

https://libreboot.org/docs/index.html#why

Knowing that, in the beginning of the GNU/Linux Action Show interview
you still falsely stated that ThinkPenguin "makes sure that all the
hardware in your catalog is 100% free software friendly" (57:20). That
includes desktops and laptops.

You went on and said that "every bit of firmware on your laptops is free
software, except for the BIOS which is... outside". (57:26)

Fast forwarding to November 2015 when FSF announces the discounted
ThinkPenguin products for their associate members.

https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/fsf-members-now-get-5-off-thinkpenguin-free-software-friendly-devices

Quoting:

"ThinkPenguin sells free software-friendly hardware, including laptops,
desktops, WiFi adapters (useful if your laptop's WiFi can't work with a
free driver), printers and more."

I guess it's convenient to have FSF recommend their associate members
your laptops and desktops with proprietary BIOS 1 month after their 30th
anniversary in October.

Right after in October you were sending off Libreboot founder and lead
developer to go work on free software for GPS devices, because in your
opinion she "would have done better" . You went on and said the effort
to have free BIOS for older laptops "would have been better spent
elsewhere", because getting software freedom-respecting laptops "is a
harder problem to solve and it is going to require massive amounts of
money".

https://trisquel.info/en/forum/asus-chromebook-c201-now-supported-libreboot-arm-cpu?page=1#comment-80943

It's also convenient to let know all FSF associate members that your
devices are OK in respect to freedom:

"5% off free software-friendly devices from ThinkPenguin" --
https://my.fsf.org/

But for you it must be as you say, just a "minor issue" you "can't
afford waste time" on it. For the rest of us, including founder of the
free software movement and the GNU project, it's not:

On 16.08.2016 22:52, Richard Stallman wrote:
> On 16.08.2016 17:14, Tiberiu-Cezar Tehnoetic wrote:
>> IMO, we should teach users to avoid this ambiguous term. Instead of
>> "free software friendly", they should use the term "compatible with
>> fully free operating systems" if the hardware is compatible with free
>> distros endorsed by FSF.
>
> I agree.  The FSF could post something about this.  I will suggest it
> to the campaigns people.
>
> In the long term, I hope that our endorsement, RYF, will set a
> standard and that people will come to see other terms, without clear
> and strict definitions as inadequate.

Re: [libreplanet-discuss] [Dev] Misleading information in EOMA68 news

2016-08-24 Thread Paul Kocialkowski 
Le mardi 23 août 2016 à 11:24 -0300, Adonay Felipe Nogueira a écrit :
> Just now, I **have** subscribed to Parabola's dev mailing list. So I'll
> try to catch-up with this topic. :)
> 
> I'm inserting libreplanet-discuss and trisquel-users mailing lists as
> recipients of this email because of my opinion on Tiberiu-Cezar
> Tehnoetic's message
> ().
> 
> I'm also inserting a member of ThinkPenguin as recipient so as to let
> him know the issue found by Tiberiu-Cezar Tehnoetic, which is discussed
> furthermore in this email.
> 
> I agree with Paul Kocialkowski's original message
> ().
> Furthermore, my **last** edit in the original pad
> () is perhaps
> the most correct one (if the timeslider references don't change over
> time, it should be
> , 
> saved July 24th, 2016. After this version, the misleading text gets 
> added).

Feel free to contribute to the revision pad:
https://pad.partidopirata.com.ar/p/parabola-eoma

Others: what do you think of this version? Please acknowledge when you think
it's ready. At this point, revision 310 suits me fine:
https://pad.partidopirata.com.ar/p/parabola-eoma/timeslider#310

However, I would gladly skip the part following "However, it's important to note
that:". Providing details there seems like a very slippery slope and I'd rather
link to relevant posts or information from the campaign page. Better yet,
quoting parts from there would be even more appropriate.

For instance, "2D and video acceleration work well with free software", while
being true, is not precise enough to be a really useful information. Also, the
part about the circuit board is too vague, since only the EOMA68 card (and not
the landing board or laptop board) were said to be withheld.

> About Tiberiu-Cezar Tehnoetic's message
> ():
> Indeed, the use of "free software friendly" to also mean "fully free
> software" or "freedom-respecting" is a communication noise (article on
> Wikipedia: ).
> Basically, in context of marketing (not sales), a communication noise
> happens when **either** the senders or receivers of a message
> distort-or-misunderstand the message.
> 
> Besides, I'm inserting a member of ThinkPenguin as recipient of this
> email so as to let him know the issue that Tiberiu-Cezar Tehnoetic found
> in ThinkPenguin's website content. This was done so as to make it easier
> for ThinkPenguin to see the issue. This **is not** meant to be taken
> offensively.

They may agree that it's an issue or not. I don't think it is one.
For the record, you're probably referring to "Company #2" from:
https://lists.parabola.nu/pipermail/dev/2016-August/004353.html

-- 
Paul Kocialkowski, developer of low-level free software for embedded devices

Website: https://www.paulk.fr/
Coding blog: https://code.paulk.fr/
Git repositories: https://git.paulk.fr/ https://git.code.paulk.fr/

signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part