Libreboot T400 laptop now FSF-certified to respect your freedom | Hacker News Reader

Libreboot T400 laptop now FSF-certified to respect your freedom

fsf.org

7 pointsawqrre7 comments

In principle, this is a good thing but in practice you are not getting much computer for your money.

I do a lot of work using an HP Stream 11 running Debian Linux and recently for fun I have been writing and developing Ruby code on a Raspberry Pi. Even as a long term financial supporter of the FSF, I have to question why not to just use a cheap but capable modern $200 laptop?

It is unfortunate that more mainstream manufacturers don't offer FSF-certified versions of their best selling laptops.

> why not to just use a cheap but capable modern $200 laptop?

The problem is that those newer machines generally require some proprietary binary blobs in the firmware to be loaded on boot that are loaded and that is considered unacceptable by this FSF certification program. It happens that the hardware for these particular laptops work without any requiring any non-free binary blobs to be loaded.

The FSF has no problem with non-free binary blobs on hardware, as long as they're burned into ROM[0]. The idea is that the firmware burned into ROM is not user serviceable - that it's never intended to be replaced and is intrinsically a part of the hardware. To have a completely different view when it comes to firmware that is loaded at initialization time seems a bit silly to me. This code is just as intrinsically a part of the function of the device, but instead of having to swap a board back to get a firmware update the firmware can be updated in the field.

[0] https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/free-bios.html, specifically: 'The ethical issues of free software arise because users obtain programs and install them in computers; they don't really apply to hidden embedded computers, or the BIOS burned in a ROM, or the microcode inside a processor chip, or the firmware that is wired into a processor in an I/O device. In aspects that relate to their design, those things are software; but as regards copying and modification, they may as well be hardware. The BIOS in ROM was, indeed, not a problem.'

My understanding is they draw the line at updatability: if someone else is able to change the code, then they can exercise unjust power over you (i.e. there's a power asymmetry between you and the vendor over who controls the device), whereas if it is just a fact of life that you cannot update a mask ROM, it is possible that there is no malicious intent from the vendor. It makes sense from the historical perspective, when it was cheaper to use a mask ROM than to incorporate flash memory, and you had to think hard about whether you have an incentive to push updates to the device. The economic incentive to the vendor consequently acted as a proxy metric to distinguish hardware from software.

Admittedly, the line is more blurry now: you can do unethical things in mask ROMs (via crypto) to exert power over the user, a la trusted boot and DRM, and you can make things updatable by accident despite having no intentions to do so simply because flash is cheaper and more straightforward to install than mask ROMs.

I think it's an eminently sensible place to draw the line. The problem is with "general purpose computers" whose program can be modified by the company you bought it from but not you. The asymmetry is the issue. It becomes outright abusive when the whole point of the product is to be a general purpose computer that can do "anything" (like a games console, which serves no purpose without games). If anything, the advent of the over-the-internet "updates" (which the user frequently can't control either) gives the entire issue a new urgency.

In the case of "firmware", one must remember that it's a fuzzy (and misleading) term that used to refer to software that was in some sense "baked in" and hard to update, but is increasingly being used to refer to what amounts to an ordinary OS. If it has to be sent to the device on every boot, there's nothing "firm" about it - it's software, plain and simple.

[0] is a sensible line for a metric of a certain level of success. Just because some ultimate goal of %100 free computing is not perfectly achievable nowadays doesn't mean shouldn't celebrate certain reasonable benchmarks.

"you are not getting much computer for your money."

a couple of things: these computers are very very cheap if you purchased used and replace the bios yourself. I've been using Macbook2,1 with libreboot and it is fast enough for most purposes.

And if you do need a power machine, you can use one of the libreboot-supported servers as a desktop machine. I've installed libreboot on kfsn4-dre server for $50 and which can max up to 12 barcelona amd cores and up to 64gig ram, which is plenty of power for most large jobs, and they are freeing even more powerful servers.

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