On Tue, Feb 24, 2026 at 12:34:44PM +0200, Wouter Verhelst wrote:
> I want us to *not pretend*. I do *not* think it is good enough to
> pretend it is not there. I want us to declare that non-free firmware is
> not free, regardless of whether it's stored in a ROM chip on a device or
> on a general-purpose storage medium. And I want to state, personally,
> that in my opinion, using non-free firmware that's installed inside a
> ROM chip on a device is *not* a better situation than having it on the
> general-purpose storage of the computer in which it's mounted -- because
> the latter means you can, theoretically, replace that firmware with
> actually free firmware. If the non-free firmware is installed in a ROM
> chip, you can't.
Without trying to ascribe a particular position to the "FSF" (which is
hard because it's unclear that anything ever spoken by Stallman
reflects the official position of the organization that he founded),
we can not take a position on that front --- and simply acknowledge
that people who are hard-core "Libre" advocates have taken a variety
of different positions and strategies.
There are those who make a distinction between a general-purpose CPU
and specialized micro-controlers. But this gets problematic when the
line between a microcontroller and a general purpocse CPU gets rather
to draw. For example, inside modern Intel CPU's there can be a
multiple x86 cores, one of which might be running Minix 3 with an
Apache Web server, which is completely non-free, and for which if you
don't update with security fixes, might make your entire system
vulnerable.
Then there are those who think there should be a distinction between
firmware which is stored on a flash, versus firmware which is
installed on ROM. In that case, so long as you never update the
flash, some of these Libre advocates will not care --- although what
happens whethere are security vulnerabilities where you really need to
download that binary component, and update the flash, is often left
unstated. They'll frame it as leaving the choice to the user, but do
we really think users will always make the decision which is in their
best interest? It also demonstrates a massive inconsistency in their
advocacy.
And then there are those who make a distinction between firmware which
is stored on RAM, and which most be downloaded from the general
purpose CPU, and where the firmware is stored on FLASH. And in
addition to the inconsistency in the advocacy, there's also a whiff of
elitism, since the reason why Flash has been replaced by RAM for
firmware storage is because having an extra flash component costs $$$.
So telling people that they must use devices that don't require the
Debian non-free-firmware component, or else they are somehow morally
compromised, is easier for people who are weathy or are otherwise more
privileged, over thsoe who are choosing the lowest cost products.
So while my personal preference is an approach to advocacy which
promotes truly open hardware where all software running on
microcontrollers and or secondary CPU's should be open sources, and
demands that the low-level hardware interfaces be fully documented,
the reality is those devices *will* be more expensive. If we are
successful, we might be able to decrease the cost differential between
fully open hardware and hardware which has some closed components.
But we should be honest and acknowledge that this gap will very likely
always be there, and not everyone will have the same priorities as
those of us who would like fully open hardware.
And it's not just the cost differential; if the truly open hardware
solution has a third the battery life, and double the thickness of say,
an Macbook Air running MacOS, trying to demand that everyone make the
same prioritize choices as yours or face condemnation of being somehow
morally compromised --- might cause large numbers of users to write
off the purely ideological advocates as hopelessly out of touch
elitists.
So it might be that those people who are trying to make Linux work
well on Macbook Air, even if it has many closed hardware components,
might be doing good and worthy work.
- Ted
