I'm not trying to fan the flames with this and I think this is an important
post as not everyone has been around here for a long time or is as
knowledgeable on the subject as some of you more experienced long time
members.
and even though it is publicity for purism, this thread made me hold off on a
purchase with them. So in the name of freedom this must be discussed. By the
way libreboot Leah, I have nothing but respect for what youve accomplished
and bring to the community.
As someone that has a libreboot x200, I recently looked at purism because I
need more power for some things and trying to accomplish that without giving
up on my freedom: I wrote purism on their forum and asked why they aren't
endorsed by FSF and il post their response below. The thing that bothered
me about the interaction is that they moved the thread I started to a private
round table board on the forum instead of leaving it public which is a big
turn off for transparency. After talking to a pretty knowledgeable IT person
I met recently he claims to be able to accomplish a similar level of freedom
on a modern computer for me, however the cost would be a little more than
going through purism and not quite as much power so I'm still on the fence
about what to do. Purism seems to be deceptive in their marketing which is
a.big turn off but the simple fact is that I need more power and can't afford
a libreboot desktop around 5k. Looking to spend about 2 grand max on my
setup.
Here's what purism said to me;
There is no such thing as a middle-ground with the FSF. The FSF will not
endorse any post-2008 Intel-based (or AMD-based, until further notice)
computer, until every last kilobyte of the Intel Management Engine (or AMD
PSP) has been reverse engineered or zeroed out (currently Purism can zero out
somewhere between 90 and 95% of the IME).
In terms of software: it’s an excruciatingly slow process (months long, and
moving targets), even if we already go above and beyond any requirements for
GNU Linux distro endorsement.
To be clear for anyone reading my previous reply: I’m not blaming the FSF
for sticking to their principles (it’s their job), I’m just stating the
current state of things, factually speaking. i.e. 99% free isn’t 100% and
therefore there is “no middleground” when it comes to certification—but
then nobody else is even remotely close to 100% with modern mainstream
hardware, either. So eventually we’ll get to the point where we meet the
FSF RYF requirements, in the meantime people have to understand that this
middle-ground is the reason why the certification has not yet been obtained,
but it’s still the furthest anyone has ever gotten in the industry, with
modern x86 that people can just purchase conveniently and a “99%”
solution.
if it’s any indication we were able to retroactively port the version 1 of
of the Librem 13 to coreboot with a neutralized ME, so it is possible to
provide updates “after shipping”. The remaining part of the IME, which
needs to be “freed”, is a matter of reverse engineering the remaining
binary (hopefully into source code form, as I understand it) to be able to
audit what it does, which would probably satisfy the FSF. So my expectation
is that this remaining part is an academic exercise that will not require a
firmware update (unless we find something really nasty in those hardware
bring-up routines).
