What would also be helpful is 100% free hardware that just works with 100%
free software.
The days of "Hey, I have a computer, I'm gonna try some new software on it"
are dying and in many cases are already dead.
How many people can change operating systems on their tablets or phone which
are computers?
When you think of it, when paying customers have chosen Windows, why wouldn't
hardware makers cater to them?
And when large corporate buyers want easier control at a distance of the
masses of computers they own, that isn't necessarily a bad problem to try to
solve.
But now that so many controls are available at the hardware level, additional
powerful groups such as Hollywood and governments want a piece of that
control action too.
These hardware control issues are sort of overtaking the fact that on a lot
of hardware, free software won't work even now.
There needs to be a source of plain vanilla hardware that is a blank canvas
so that people who have certain uses can install whatever they want and use
it as they need to.
Many products now have small computers in them (and the computers are getting
quite powerful) with most of them running some sort of specialized GNU/Linux
already. Just not Trisquel for instance.
Set top boxes, TVs, appliances, machinery, cars, (some cars now have upwards
of 30 little computers in them) so why aren't we focusing on those cheap,
blank, almost throwaway computers as well? They are currently a hairs width
from being powerful enough to easily put and run a full GNU/Linux system on
them. Some people are doing it already with Debian or Ubuntu, but it's not
easy yet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture "…in 2010 alone, producers
of chips based on ARM architectures reported shipments of 6.1 billion
ARM-based processors, representing 95% of smartphones, 35% of digital
televisions and set-top boxes and 10% of mobile computers." I'll bet there
are more than 6 billion a year as of 2013.
I think there will always be a need to have these type of "chip computers as
parts". It makes no sense to try and load into them all sorts of hardware
backdoor codes and so on because the end usages of those parts covers the
entire spectrum of daily living now. Medical devices, cars, washing machines,
TVs. While it might be nice to have backdoor control to a TV, how would you
do it without disrupting the chips in a in lawsuit prone medical device?
Its like in industry when at the most basic levels a producer gets raw plant
or mineral material and turns it into base "goo". From there, other companies
may add color, texture, odor; they may water it down, or harden it, and so
on, it becomes many different things. Maybe some of the base material is used
in food-related industry and some used for hazardous waste, as in plastic
containers of various types.
If we can get to the lowest levels possible, connecting with sources who
produce "raw" computers, we can add what we want to them.
I am looking for sources like that and have found some. More research is
required because I don't know the industry, but basic computers--even if they
do not resemble what we think of as a computer--are available right now.
Lately, they have become powerful enough to be nearly equivalent to a basic
desktop machine.
Again, if 100% free-as-in-freedom hardware were easily obtainable, free
software would install and run on it without incident. Every time! In terms
of fixes, no non-free code would ever be an issue, as nothing proprietary was
ever there.
This is not a dream. It is possible. There are hurdles but they are not huge
ones. quidam in his talk this past March indicated that Trisquel has some of
the best accessibility in the GNU/Linux world and it took him about 2 days to
implement it.
I'm not saying moving this way would be "easy", I'm saying it wouldn't be
that hard and certainly not impossible given a proper hardware home.
