Hi Ted,
On Tue, Feb 24, 2026 at 08:56:31AM -0500, Theodore Tso wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 24, 2026 at 12:34:44PM +0200, Wouter Verhelst wrote:
> > I want us to *not pretend*. I do *not* think it is good enough to
> > pretend it is not there. I want us to declare that non-free firmware is
> > not free, regardless of whether it's stored in a ROM chip on a device or
> > on a general-purpose storage medium. And I want to state, personally,
> > that in my opinion, using non-free firmware that's installed inside a
> > ROM chip on a device is *not* a better situation than having it on the
> > general-purpose storage of the computer in which it's mounted -- because
> > the latter means you can, theoretically, replace that firmware with
> > actually free firmware. If the non-free firmware is installed in a ROM
> > chip, you can't.
>
> Without trying to ascribe a particular position to the "FSF" (which is
> hard because it's unclear that anything ever spoken by Stallman
> reflects the official position of the organization that he founded),
While this is true, we *can* look at official FSF projects, such as the
"respect your freedom" project that advocates for the "firmware must be
on ROM or flash on the actual device" position.
So even though it's difficult to make a distinction between what the FSF
believes and what RMS believes, in this particular case, I think it's
fair to say that the two align.
(or you can be a bit more cynical and state that the opinions of the FSF
and RMS are practically indistinguishable and can therefore be assumed
to be the same in the general case, but obviously that might not be so
helpful)
> we can not take a position on that front --- and simply acknowledge
> that people who are hard-core "Libre" advocates have taken a variety
> of different positions and strategies.
I meant my previous email not as a comment on the current state of how
people act in the community, but rather as what I think Debian should
do.
[...snip description of advocate groups that seems accurate but is
largely irrelevant to the point I was trying to make...]
> So while my personal preference is an approach to advocacy which
> promotes truly open hardware where all software running on
> microcontrollers and or secondary CPU's should be open sources, and
> demands that the low-level hardware interfaces be fully documented,
> the reality is those devices *will* be more expensive.
I don't see that this last line follows from the rest of that paragraph.
I'm arguing that all firmware should be free, regardless of how it's
brought to the working memory of the device on which it's running.
Firmware can be free, regardless of whether it's installed on a ROM
chip, on a flash chip, or on the main general-purpose storage device
inside its computer. So the required components of the hardware, and
therefore the cost of this hardware, is orthogonal to whether the
firmware is free or not.
Or do you mean to say that creating the firmware as free software would
make it more expensive for companies to do this, and that they would
pass that cost on to consumers? I don't see that this is true. Quite the
contrary, in fact; if firmware were shipped as free software in the
general case, then I would expect it to become common for libraries and
common toolsets to be created, which would make the maintenance of this
firmware to be cheaper to do for companies.
Or do you mean something else? If so I don't understand :)
[...]
> So it might be that those people who are trying to make Linux work
> well on Macbook Air, even if it has many closed hardware components,
> might be doing good and worthy work.
I absolutely agree with you on this, but also don't think it relates to
the point I was trying to make :)
--
"I never had a C in history!"
"Yeah, but there was so much less of it when you were my age!"
-- Joe Brockmeier recounting a conversation with his father, cfgmgmtcamp 2026,
Ghent
