On Wednesday 14 January 2015 03:42 AM, Jonas Smedegaard wrote: > Quoting Sunil Mohan Adapa (2015-01-13 21:05:38) >> On Wednesday 14 January 2015 01:08 AM, Blibbet wrote: >>> To me it is unsuitable for a FreedomBox due to firmware, which is >>> probably UEFI-based if hardware comes from Intel. >> >> Indeed, proprietary firmware is a deal breaker. > > You mean UEFI specifically, or that *any* use of proprietary firmware is > a deal breaker?
I meant any proprietary firmware including WiFi firmware needed for most single board computers with WiFi capability (by relying USB WiFi devices). > > Makes sense to me to steer free of proprietary code whereever possible, > and we have enough options not requiring proprietary firmware injected > at boot time, but I think it is too early to set the bar so high as to > require no proprietary firmware exist soldered onto the board. If the proprietary firmware is not executed (or can be disabled), say for an optional hardware component, then I guess we can live with it. I do agree that it might be too early though. We can confirm a few free working options and then look at this direction. > > If you mean only UEFI, then why avoid that specifically? Yes, I know > that Free firmware like Coreboot is better when offered (which is not > the case currently), but how is e.g. proprietary BIOS better? > > >> We should consider promising FreedomBox users images and devices with >> only free software and firmware. Especially since we do seem to have >> some viable hardware options. In the last meeting everyone seem to >> agree that we should remove non-free repositories from FreedomBox >> images wherever possible. This would be a step further. > > What do you mean by "whereever possible" in above? Is non-free Debian > repositories less of a deal breaker than UEFI or other pre-loaded > proprietary firmware? If so, why? We are currently using non-free repositories for all FreedomBox images, even VirtualBox images. We only had a brief discussion but from what I understand the agreement was to remove non-free repositories from images where it is not needed, such as from VirtualBox and BeagleBone images. There was no discussion on what to do about hardware that requires non-free software. In my opinion, pre-loaded proprietary firmware is as bad as non-free Debian repositories particularly if that firmware is replaceable. > > **** > > 60 boards now for sale arguably match or surpass the DreamPlug. Makes > sense to me to raise the bar higher, but not arbitrarily. > > We could add a requirement that the board must not use UEFI (if that is > sensible - see my question above). That would still leave is with 55 > options. I believe we should consider generalizing this for any non-free firmware. The idea is that all software and firmware on FreedomBox shall be free. If we do this (and pull off a nicely working FreedomBox), many of our users will appreciate the fully freely aspect. It will become a strong point for FreedomBox adoption. > > We could add a requirement that the board must be Open Hardware. That > would leave us with 12 options from 3 vendors. I don't think we should do this. At least, not yet. We should certainly prioritize Open Hardware though. -- Sunil
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