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.
It is all about where you want to draw the line between the hardware and software. Each of these has to be approached in different way since we can relatively easily modify/build the software, but not hardware (it needs huge investments and scale to be cost effective - may be 3D printers will be able to change that equation in the future, but not very likely in near future). So for hardware we are willing to give more power to manufacturers, but not for software.
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.
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. 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.
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.
So the value of this is, looking at your ability to easily modify, do we have the freedom to modify?
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