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Comment by marcodiego | Hacker News Reader

The girl who runs minifree has had many financial troubles while trying to keep it.

I strongly recommend people buying products from people who are willing to make sacrifices to offer a product that respects your freedom.

If we do not support people like her, we assume the future risk of having zero costumer really owned devices.

Whenever you plan to buy a device and care about not being spied and having control over your owned device, please consider supporting vendors listed here: https://ryf.fsf.org/

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My finances are really good these days. I had temporary difficulties in early 2020, as did many people at the start of the covid pandemic, but those are long behind me now. The company has existed since 2014.

The company is doing extremely well these days. I'm very grateful for everyone's support!

PS:

New Libreboot release soon.

The current Libreboot 20210522 testing release (from May 2021) is more or less complete, and the most major issue (the reset bug) is now fixed in libreboot Git.

I'm polishing the current Git and aiming for a new stable release.

Hi Leah!

I think the RockPro64 [1] as well as the rockpi4 can be run without any binary blobs. Why I don't see any vendor considering ryf-certifiying devices based on them?

[1] https://stikonas.eu/wordpress/2019/09/15/blobless-boot-with-...

The FSF must decide whether to endorse a product, and it must be requested by the supplier. So if a product could be endorsed, but isn't, it's either being reviewed or has not been submitted by the vendor.

In fact, I'm interested in their product commercially for Minifree, and also interested in terms of Libreboot. You can replace the default uboot firmware with coreboot, which offers many more features and there's where my company could really offer some nice custom services.

It has been on TODO for Libreboot since May 2021: https://libreboot.org/tasks/#investigate-u-boot

It is mentioned here, in the context of u-boot specifically, but I'm aware that coreboot also supports it.

I acquired a Rockpi4 in the hope to use it blob-free. But I'd love to see vendors trying to ryf-certify it. Do you (or any other vendor) have plans to sell or certify it?

It's on my TODO.

Looking forward to it. Getting an rk3399 device ryf-certified would be great. They have accelerated 3d graphics and video codecs that are (AFAIK) fully supported by fully free software. It would be, although not very powerful, the most modern affordable ryf-certified device available. I really hope you do it.

Also in your list of tasks you list ROCKPro64. Although I really like pine64 steps, I think the best rk3399 device for such a task is the Rock Pi 4 Model A Plus, it's got a faster processor, no wifi and the usb-c port is used for power only: no need to care about blobs for eDP! So, if you are thinking about a board to support, I'd suggest you to think about the Rock Pi 4 Model A Plus.

> New Libreboot release soon.

> The current Libreboot 20210522 testing release (from May 2021) is more or less complete, and the most major issue (the reset bug) is now fixed in libreboot Git.

That's really exciting news! Is there any documentation on how to upgrade libreboot?

https://libreboot.org/docs/install/

How does buying used laptops and installing software on them to then sell to yet another party stop manufacturers preventing this in the future? Why can't people just buy the used laptop made by the big manufacturer and install it themselves? Why trust more third-parties than you absolutely have to?

It seems like the founder also develops libreboot, so by buying a laptop from her you ensure that libreboot keep around.

Flashing custom firmware may be difficult or risky for people with little experience. I can see why one would outsource that service to a vendor.

Well, the founder is also the Libreboot founder and lead. The Libreboot releases are signed with her GPG key, she isn't exactly a third party.

So, as a sibling comment points out, buying from her helps ensure Libreboot's continued existence.

Additionally, in the past (I'm not sure what the financial situation is today), buying from her has also also gone to actually hiring developers to work on Libreboot and port it to more hardware.

> Why can't people just buy the used laptop made by the big manufacturer and install it themselves?

They can. The founder actually encourages this! At conferences she's run workshops to help people install it themselves.

This should be pointed out left, right and center. Does she have a monthly subscription like a Patreon to support her work? If not, there needs to be one. The work is ultimately more important than the computers sold, and I'm sure plenty who installed it themselves would directly fund her.

It appears that she does: https://www.patreon.com/libreleah

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