Hi, On Mon, 2025-03-10 at 13:27 +0530, Pirate Praveen wrote: > On 3/9/25 9:20 PM, Ansgar 🙀 wrote: > > What is the point of this then? > > If I understood the argument of FSF correctly, the point is, having the > same freedom as the hardware manufacturer to modify or not modify.In > case of hardware without firmware (or fused firmware that cannot be > modified further), this argument has some merit, I think. But if it > needs firmware to function, I think argument is hardware manufacturers > having more power than you to modify firmware.
No, the hardware manufacturer has more power with preinstalled firmware as well: they can more easily provide updates for on-board ROMs as well. (You can ship ROMs just like a USB media for OS-provided firmware images; it is just a different media.) > It is all about where you want to draw the line between the hardware and > software. [...] So for hardware we are willing to give more > power to manufacturers, but not for software. So we just declare software as hardware and suddenly it is "free"? Cool, then the preinstalled Windows is free (in the FSF "respects your freedom" sense) too if I don't install updates. :-) > > Does it help users to replace/rewrite non-free firmware if it is not > > supplied by the operating system? Or enable the user to not use non- > > free firmware? I don't think so. > > In a weird way, if you don't update the firmware, then no one has the > ability to modify. Who is "you"? The user can choose what firmware version they want to install with OS-supplied firmware. If they don't like a newer version, they can just provide an older one to the hardware. Pretty much all firmware in non-free has no provisions that you have to use the newest version as that would be a problem for Debian to organize... So how does this change depending on where the firmware is stored? > Basically hardware manufacturers are withholding code that they could > give you easily, at least from the point of view of actually making use > of it. They can also give you the hardware schematics easily so you can install it in a FPGA instead of their provided chips. (And what when the firmware is programming for a FPGA?) That would make modifying the hard- and firmware easier ;-) > The actual hardware design may not be as useful like firmware as > modifying that will still require ability to manufacture, but for > firmware you already have the ability to use modified version. Debian doesn't decide what is free or not free based on what the user is capable of doing. For some experienced hardware developer, modifying the hardware schematics can be easier than modifying software code. Otherwise we should factor in the programming language used in free vs non-free which would make most shell code non-free as it is too hard to modify in a safe way. ;-) > > The only other reason to do this seems to be free/libre-washing by > > pretending the non-free firmware is not there... But I don't think that > > is something useful to spend resources on (but if people want to do so > > for unofficial installer images, they are of course free to do so; as > > far as I understand the FSF is in favor of free/libre-washing). > > > > Or is there some other reason to want to do this? > > In an academic way, this gives user same freedom as the hardware > manufacturer - no one is able to modify the hardware (if you never > update the firmware yourself). So the hardware manufacturer don't have > control over your hardware, after you received it. If you give root to the hardware manufacturer to manage firmware files on your computer, then they have control. Firmware updates don't magically arrive on your hard disk unless you either install them or someone sneakily breaks into your computer. >From a purely academic way, we might also discuss hidden wireless backdoors in hardware with pre-installed firmware. There pre-installed firmware is even worse as it is harder to find backdoors if you can't even look at the proprietary binary code. > So the value of this is, looking at your ability to easily modify, do we > have the freedom to modify? So not providing firmware via the operating system gives users the freedom to modify firmware? I don't follow. Ansgar
