I would make the argument that ThinkPenguin's following the Free Software
Foundation guidelines to the extent possible. If your going to try and argue
failures in our product line up I'm going to come back and argue the Free
Software Foundation's not living up to its own standards. The reality is
we're all living in an imperfect situation with goals significantly greater
than what is achievable. What that means is we should all try and live up to
those ideals to the best of each owns ability. I think Trisquel, the Free
Software Foundation, and ThinkPenguin have all done that. I think other 'free
software' projects have not despite that many have advanced free software
adoption. Some have settled somewhere in-between and I'm significantly less
critical of them (though the FSF is rightly not so, but then that is the
FSF's job, it's why I contribute, and I think most others contribute to the
FSF).
That said I believe the majority of the products in our catalog are
certifiable under the current certification rules. Just because we have not
taken the time or they are not yet certified does not make them less free
software friendly. If something in our catalog is not technically certifiable
then the Free Software Foundation is probably not in compliance with its own
rules that sets out the standards in regards to hardware certification.
The certification process is time consuming and whether or not it's worth
while is up in the air. We certify not because its profitable, but because we
support the program. I firmly believe we should be promoting hardware
certification over h-node and similar databases. I've been using GNU/Linux
since GNU/Linux distributions have been around and worked in the consumer
desktop GNU/Linux space since 2005. Even before graduating from university
that is. I've been doing this for about 10 years and have seen the real world
results of poor decisions in this regards. Individual perspectives on this
give a warped perception of reality in most cases. Either because users are
very technical or because ones world is too small. I can probably name only a
handful of people that I've ever met who've truly understood the problem and
as far I'm concerned there are only two efforts under way to fix it. One of
them I founded in 2008 and the other is the Respect Your Freedom
Certification. I might also add Gluglug to the list although my thoughts on
that are a bit varied and reserved. I like the idea and applaud those
involved although I'm not sure it's helping move things forward. However I
don't have all the details so I'll refrain from going further. There are at
least a handful of people here who I feel fully get what we're trying to do,
and fully understand the hardware problems.
What I will say beyond this is that regardless of the Free Software
Foundation's position on unsupported components my position on it is that we,
as a community that is, should avoid them. I'd go even further and say we
should pool resources in order to gain influence. Unfortunately I think that
message has not gotten out there fully despite numerous advocates here.
Personally I don't want to have to write out thousands of times the same
thing. It's both annoying and self-serving, both in a good way, and
potentially in a bad way. What I do do sometimes is try and correct people
when they spout off really poor advice or otherwise make critical errors
(it's not hard to do, even those very knowledgeable here who I highly respect
do it occasionally). Undoubtedly most people are not as knowledgeable and do
not have access to tons of hardware.
Divided as we are we will fail as a community to gain access to the source
code under desirable free software licenses if we continue on this path. A
vibrant set of free software friendly hardware and solutions will continue to
be lacking and/or completely unavailable in many cases. The bluetooth
minipcie wifi combo cards are a perfect example of this problem. There is no
combination of bluetooth/wifi that actually works with 100% free software.
Given that there are options and most people have the resources I'd suggest a
USB bluetooth adapter /w CSR chipset and a mini pcie card that is strictly
802.11n atheros chipset based.
That said despite the sad reality this is not rant about giving up.
ThinkPenguin's going to continue moving boulders and I'm going to continue
advocating for free software. What this is is a rant about getting others to
do the same. I don't expect people to work for nothing even if many purely
free software developers and contributors currently are.
Unfortunately the projects which are most at the forefront get an unfair
advantage. A discussion I just had today. How many people have contributed to
a project that was not at the forefront? That is something you use every day,
but don't see. Core utilities you might be using that have a GUI written by
somebody else for example. Trisquel is dependent on a lot of other projects.
Many of which are not in a position to request donations because there users
never see there web site.
