To be fair, while it’s the Libreboot creator’s project and they can do whatever they want with it, I can see why people are upset that Libreboot has had the “Libre” in it’s name seemingly neglected.
The FSF is an ideological organisation. It’s important that they exist. It’s also important that pure free software exists. Pragmatism is also important, but without any purity, the “extreme” of software freedom gets watered down, and so the window of an “acceptable” amount of proprietary-ness shifts as a new, less hardline “extreme” takes it’s place, if that makes sense. We should be striving for full software freedom, even if it’s currently just a dream.
Libreboot was a pure libre software project. Now it isn’t. Originally, a fork called osboot was created with the new blob reduction policy. That was fine, because it was a different name that didn’t mislead (also because nobody knew osboot as the fully free BIOS replacement). Then that policy became Libreboot policy. Libreboot is no longer fully libre, despite it having been exactly that for it’s whole life. It had an established name as the fully free BIOS replacement. It was known for that. Hence the upset.
Also, I see Canoeboot as a success. Rowe seems to be doing it out of spite, but it’s achieved what the GNU project wants. It has successfully pushed Rowe to at least provide some sort of fully free release again.
Wtf, I didn’t know that Libreboot wasn’t fully libre any more. I agree with the FSF’s ideology here. The only reason to run Libreboot over Coreboot was 100% FOSS, and if that’s not the case, then there is no point to it anymore.
Thanks for mentioning the other projects, I’ll take a look
The point isn’t just pragmatism. The point is that you’re running closed source software either way. Even ideologically, running out of date closed source software because it’s built into the chip isn’t actually any better than running a current version of the same software from a drive. Maybe that distinction made sense in the 90s when mircocode updates weren’t a thing most people dealt with, although honestly even back then it was a little weird. Now it’s complete garbage. The FSF is an important organization, which makes it all the more important to call them out when they’re wasting time and money on stupid nonsense.
To be fair, while it’s the Libreboot creator’s project and they can do whatever they want with it, I can see why people are upset that Libreboot has had the “Libre” in it’s name seemingly neglected.
The FSF is an ideological organisation. It’s important that they exist. It’s also important that pure free software exists. Pragmatism is also important, but without any purity, the “extreme” of software freedom gets watered down, and so the window of an “acceptable” amount of proprietary-ness shifts as a new, less hardline “extreme” takes it’s place, if that makes sense. We should be striving for full software freedom, even if it’s currently just a dream.
Libreboot was a pure libre software project. Now it isn’t. Originally, a fork called osboot was created with the new blob reduction policy. That was fine, because it was a different name that didn’t mislead (also because nobody knew osboot as the fully free BIOS replacement). Then that policy became Libreboot policy. Libreboot is no longer fully libre, despite it having been exactly that for it’s whole life. It had an established name as the fully free BIOS replacement. It was known for that. Hence the upset.
Also, I see Canoeboot as a success. Rowe seems to be doing it out of spite, but it’s achieved what the GNU project wants. It has successfully pushed Rowe to at least provide some sort of fully free release again.
I agree with your point on the necessity of FSF and pure free software. Your comment seems to describe pretty well the Overton Window
Wtf, I didn’t know that Libreboot wasn’t fully libre any more. I agree with the FSF’s ideology here. The only reason to run Libreboot over Coreboot was 100% FOSS, and if that’s not the case, then there is no point to it anymore.
Thanks for mentioning the other projects, I’ll take a look
The point isn’t just pragmatism. The point is that you’re running closed source software either way. Even ideologically, running out of date closed source software because it’s built into the chip isn’t actually any better than running a current version of the same software from a drive. Maybe that distinction made sense in the 90s when mircocode updates weren’t a thing most people dealt with, although honestly even back then it was a little weird. Now it’s complete garbage. The FSF is an important organization, which makes it all the more important to call them out when they’re wasting time and money on stupid nonsense.
Yeah, I wish someone released software to my exact requirements out of spite. They can release it out of race hate if they like