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Comment by catboybotnet | Hacker News Reader

Functional code is better than non-functional code. What good is libreboot if you can't use it? You're more than welcome to use the now-maintained notgnuboot.vimuser.org or libreboot censored if you hate binary blobs, and are also more than welcome to try to find hardware that doesn't have closed source blobs built in.

I love free software, and will never stop, but "Libre" is only great in a vacuum.

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I have come around on the driver blob issue a bit in recent years. Something using software blobs can be RE'd and become fully free someday, but is not FSF-approved until it is. Burn the same blobs into the hardware where they can't be changed and the FSF approves because "it's as good as it can get", however they're really about equal levels of freedom, and the software one can become better later on, so it starts to seem silly. I don't want to imply people should stop fighting the fight, more like grabbing some of the FSF-approved hardware feels like giving up on the fight actually.

Saying this as someone who has replaced and removed WLAN cards in laptops that need blobs, and used FSF-approved distros long-term.

Somewhat related, I think the Apple Silicon MacBooks will end up replacing many people's old ThinkPads someday thanks to the work from the Asahi team. (A bit early right now, especially if you have one newer than an M1.)

> Somewhat related, I think the Apple Silicon MacBooks will end up replacing many people's old ThinkPads someday thanks to the work from the Asahi team. (A bit early right now, especially if you have one newer than an M1.)

That sounds a bit weird to me: reading Asahi blog posts, it sounds like Asahi are doing little hardware drivers, rather a lot of RPCs, because most hardware features are behind some other CPU running proprietary firmware. (Loaded by bootloader stages before Asahi if I followed correctly)

> Functional code is better than non-functional code. What good is libreboot if you can't use it?

Some people believe that the absence of antifeatures is more important than the presence of features. That's... honestly one of GNU's big controversial ideas, for decades now.

Libreboot/Coreboot/etc are themselves projects which try to replace what many would consider a "binary blob" with open source code.

It's not surprising that the inclusion of (smaller) binary blobs in those projects is an issue which elicits strong feelings both ways since it goes to the core of the projects' purposes.

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