Re: [Trisquel-users] On "Open Source Hardware"

[leny2010]

There's both 'open source hardware' and 'free hardware' definitions (see last  
year in this forum for links).   The open source hardware definition is about  
zero fee (gratis) use of the hardware design.  Free hardware OTOH is more  
closely aligned with free software.  Although AIUI they accept the use of  
non-free software tools for putting HDL on FPGAs and ASICS until such time as  
libre FPGA hardware is available in a bootstrapping / parallel development  
combination.

In his GNU 30th speech RMS encouraged the free software community to work  
with the free hardware community in the hope of creating a fully free  
non-traitorous computer platform.  He did say free software shouldn't regard  
that as the only option, reverse engineering proprietary hardware is also  
needed.