Countryguy, I guess my challenge would be this: If you consire all this easy and important, why don't you start right away implementing on those ideas and share the links with the results with everyone? (This is what I say to myself every time I think about something on the lines of your message. That is, it's not something to write about, or to suggest, but to get done. If it's good and relevant to you, start working on it, it's all BSD - maybe other people would follow you). I guess that's why projects like OpenBSD deserve respect: they are not just preaching the importance of security, they are actually working and building an OS consistent with this. And they are working on that for a looong time.
So, the best "constructive critic" IMHO is 1) provide better code; or 2) fork. What will it be? "Nah, just had this great important revolutionary idea that I thought would change reality." Thanx, but... It's harder than this, YOU need to WORK on your idea, A LOT, implement it, ask for guidance from other people, make it better... Takes a good load of stamina. If you want HW freedom, I think the viable way is this: https://www.crowdsupply.com/purism/librem-15#products-top Don't forget to cryptograph all your messages, all your data, making sure it goes encrypted end to end always. Cheers! On Friday, June 5, 2015, <countryg...@safe-mail.net> wrote: > Hello, > It has come to my attention that OpenBSD does not included non-free > drivers, dubbed "blobs" - which is excellent. However, you still include > non-free firmware in the kernel and some packages. > > With spying revelations, it is well-known that non-free firmware can > contain backdoors. ( just one recent example: > http://www.wired.com/2015/02/nsa-firmware-hacking/ ) > > I would feel a lot safer if the kernel and packages were fully free, > containing no non-free drivers nor non-free "firmware". > > At the very least provide a separate branch of known "clean" 100% free > packages and kernel. For example the non-free athn and rsu firmware are > currently in the repository, and I would suspect other non-free firmware is > into the kernel. > > Offering a stripped kernel and separating those few packages only > increases the security of OpenBSD. > > Also, We can probably find replacements for most all the non-free > firmware. Taking for example this replacement for some of the athn > firmwares: https://github.com/qca/open-ath9k-htc-firmware > > All we'd need is a driver to load those instead of the blobs. > > > Thanks for your time and consideration!
