op 09-09-14 15:47, Ansgar Burchardt schreef: > Hi, > > On 09/05/2014 19:05, John Sullivan wrote: >> For the FSF standards, the key is that there be no nonfree software. > > Is the key no non-free software or no non-free software that the user sees? > > As I understand previous discussions, the FSF is fine with non-free > firmware as long as it does not have to be loaded by the operating > system, i.e. already loaded on the card itself or loaded by the BIOS > before booting the (free) operating system.
The FSF likes it too to have a free bios. They did launch a version of coreboot without non-free firmware, called "libreboot". http://libreboot.org/docs/index.html#why > I also have a question about this: in the extreme case the firmware for > devices can be more or less an operating system on its own, think IPMI > cards. Would this count as "free" as the operating system doesn't have > to load the firmware? If no, why do other devices with non-free on-board > firmware count as free? The FSF likes free IPMI too, I expect. But the IPMI software runs on another device I would say. I have seen an open source IPMI solution called CoreIPM. If somebody has experiences, I would like to hear more. http://www.coreipm.com/ >> The >> ath9k-htc one is the only currently FSF-certified chipset, but we would >> consider others where there wasn't any firmware loaded by the kernel at >> all. The more user-modifiable the device is, the better, but our >> baseline standard only asks for no nonfree software. > > I agree about this, but don't really make a difference where non-free > firmware comes from. That's my opinion too. And remember: everything what you can do in software, you can do in hardware... It's only less flexible. So I want free hardware too ;-) With regards, Paul van der Vlis. -- Paul van der Vlis Linux systeembeheer, Groningen http://www.vandervlis.nl _______________________________________________ Fsf-collab-discuss mailing list Fsf-collab-discuss@lists.alioth.debian.org http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fsf-collab-discuss