Nonfree software found in GNU Boot releases again, many distros affected

> Yes, they're dogmatic in the literal meaning of that word.

Debatable. Guix has adequate grounds to build their beliefs on and they accept other stances besides their own. Guix may think the others are wrong, but that's their privilege, just like you are privileged to think they are wrong. So they seem to be more principled than dogmatic.

GNU Boot is not free software?

> With nonfree firmware, you are a slave from the vendor, because he could release a new backdoored firmware anytime making even more damage to the users' freedom.

You don't have to take the updated firmware, though?

> Dogmatic FSF people think that hardware that has proprietary blobs stored in ROM is "free"

Do they? Or do you think you might have exaggerated their position to make your point? I seem to remember they consider it as undesirable but inevitable, whereas passing around non-free code helps to normalize it.

But it makes perfect sense.

Microcode in ROM is fixed. Nobody - neither you nor the vendor - can alter it. You are both equal.

Microcode as a binary blob loaded at runtime means the vendor has the source and tools and can create and alter and build and distribute the modifications and FUCK YOU you can't do any of those things legally. Just copy some opaque blob unmodified - that's non-free software in a nutshell.

Solution 1: vendor gives out the source and tools for creating the blob under a free license.

Solution 2: don't buy or use that hardware. Support vendors that support solution 1.

Solution 3: the vendor, having refused to offer their firmware under free software terms (which they totally could do and the whole idea of the free software movement is to get them to do it), agrees the compromise that they cannot alter the firmware either so puts it in ROM. They'd prefer not to, of course, but if they want another option, solution 1 is right there. Free the firmware and this problem goes away.

If you think other solutions are "pragmatic", just pragmatically use non-free Windows which is full of opaque binary blobs you don't have the source for and can't recreate, let alone alter or redistribute the changes. That counts as free software, right?

In an ideal world there would be no binary blobs. We do not live in an ideal world. Instead the “dogmatic” FSF have compromised and said that if NO ONE can change the binary blob then everyone is equal. Which is true. However, if you can upgrade it so too can the manufacturer, and this is as a whole disrespectful to user freedom as you have no access to the source. Especially in this day and age when firmwares can be updated OTA and some even include backdoors like Intel ME.

They needed to draw a line somewhere, and it made sense to draw it there in the 1980's or whenever. The unfortunate part is that rather than just pragmatically saying baked in firmware wasn't their current concern, they created a rationalization about how it's more free to not be able to change your firmware. And once you put that kind of contradiction in your axioms, you're off to the races of poor conclusions.

I'm pretty adamant about software freedom, but my own model involves computational domains and resulting security properties. CPU microcode is a pretty shitty thing, but it's in a similar camp to proprietary CPU designs so that's just where we are in 2024. Proprietary firmware in non-networked peripherals does not bother me at all. Updating firmware only bothers me to the extent that proprietary update processes require more work (including sandboxing to thwart any telemetry). Meanwhile proprietary BIOS, regardless of whether it gets updated, is a huge red flag based on how much access it has to the whole system plus the network.

Having said that, this topic is where the FSF's definition actually has more relevancy. It is neat to be able to say everything in this tarball/cdimage/etc is 100% libre licensed, orthogonal to the implications for how it affects users' freedom. So doing the work here is seemingly worthwhile even if it's not fully necessary to serve the FSF's main goal.

I just wish they'd stop focusing on this outmoded definition for things like the firmware blobs in Trisquel/Guix, which actually ends up harming user freedom/actualization by making for a poor experience that makes libre software look like some kind of religion based on purity rather than programmer self empowerment.

I may be wrong but in some case those binary blobs coming with the drivers are needed exactly because the device themselves don't come with them stored in rom and just have a simpler initialization logic that wait for the blob before running it.

RISC-V ?

And reality proves over and over again that open source firmware and hardware are very much needed.

Yes, I said 'cut down', not ditched completely, as there are FLOSS graphical and Gluxle/Z-Machine games.