Comment by jeppesen-io | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jeppesen-io | Hacker News Reader

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FSF's hardline attitude has always rubbed me the wrong way. I respect and support their goals but at the end of the day software should respect the needs and desires of their users

I saw this on the nonguix repo for all non free software for guix

> Please do NOT promote this repository on any official Guix communication channels, such as their mailing lists or IRC channel, even in response to support requests! This is to show respect for the Guix project’s strict policy against recommending nonfree software, and to avoid any unnecessary hostility.

To do my job and boot my laptop nonguix is required but not even allowed to talk about it with the OS it intends to support, is not something I can agree with

I think the above is the type of side-effects seen with a hardline policy of the FSF. Obviously I'm not the target of this type of policy, but I still feel more good can be done in the long run with a little compromise to the realities of using a computer today

> To do my job and boot my laptop nonguix is required but not even allowed to talk about it with the OS it intends to support, is not something I can agree with

The OS isn't a person. The OS has online discussion forums and the people who develop the OS CAN talk about it in the appropriate forum. Identifying and separating nonfree issues is a useful tool in their goals.

The FSF last year started a new campaign that is specifically meant to not be hardline and to respect the needs and desires of users: https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/support-the-freedom-ladd....

> Identifying and separating nonfree issues is a useful tool in their goals.

Issues are not always easily separated but I understand it's a tool for their goals. It's just not for me

> The FSF last year started a new campaign that is specifically meant to not be hardline and to respect the needs and desires of users: https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/support-the-freedom-ladd....

I was not aware of this - I will read up on it. Thank you

I understand your position, but it would be better if the compromise was made by "the other side".

Everyone always thinks it would be better if the compromise was made by the other side, don't they?

What you're describing is just a concession. A compromise is where neither side quite gets everything they want and both have to give a little.

The otherside in this case is selling you a thing and in some cases restricting you what you can and can't do with the hardware you bought. Which means you don't really own it.

We have given them money. They should let us use our hardware as we see fit. In the case of nvidia literally detecting certain workloads and deliberately reducing the performance. Whether you think Crypto mining should be a thing or not, they purchased the hardware legally and should be able to use it as they see fit (as long as it is not illegal).

With AMD GPUs it literally doesn't make anysense. They've released millions of lines of code to the Linux kernel so their GPUs work correctly with Linux and then I have to download a proprietary firmware for my card to initialise properly. Is the firmware really that secret? I doubt it.

Oh, sure, that would be preferred but I can't see that happening anytime soon. I guess it all depends on whether you feel like the FSFs polices will bring improvement for open blobs etc

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