On 03/08/2018 11:34 AM, Alessandro Selli wrote:
In fact it's just another take of Taiidan against Purism, it's his job.
You fail to mention that there are many people who are constantly
promoting purism, whereas I am the only one who provides constructive
criticism.
I have told them that their marketing is dishonest many times, hell they
even agreed with me that it needed to be changed only they never did so.
Purism is NOT free hardware and certainly not "grassroots" as their
mysterious founder somehow has a bottomless pit of money to burn on
hardware costs and propaganda campaigns.
[...]
Are these things an illusion?
https://puri.sm/posts/purism-integrates-heads-security-firmware-with-tpm-giving-full-control-and-digital-privacy-to-laptop-users/
https://puri.sm/posts/librem-now-most-secure-laptop-under-full-user-with-tamper-evident-features/
They didn't make heads they simply install it on their laptops.
Again my issue is that they claim to have "open source firmware" and a
"disabled" ME when they actually don't.
You tell me I am "attacking them" since you care so much you can email
them to remove the dishonest marketing and sell their products *as they
are* not as they could be eventually - then I would have no issue with them
I encourage everyone who cares about the future of free computing to
contact the FSF about this.
Here are posts that help explain the purism situation better than I can.
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/3anjgm/on_the_librem_laptop_purism_doesnt_believe_in/
In IT terms, that Reddit thread started a long time ago.... perhaps it
is irrelevant these days?
It is still relevant, purism claims to have "open source firmware" when
all the hardware init is done via binary blobs.
No, it is not relevent, and Taiidan knows it, as he was explained time ago,
in 2017-11-03:
https://lists.dyne.org/lurker/message/20171103.162330.6499510a.en.html
He falsely writes that all Purism did was "running ME cleaner which they
didn't make", while in fact what they did is this (quoting from the November
email):
The HAP bit doesn't disable ME.
Try removing the ME ROM from purism's firmware (I assume you have one) -
the laptop will shut off after 30 minutes.
If the ME really was disabled you could physically disconnect the ME cpu
core, or remove the and have the laptop still function.
The ME kernel runs, thus ME is not disabled.
As before they simply need to revise their marketing to say "Partially
disabled".
https://puri.sm/posts/deep-dive-into-intel-me-disablement/
When the ME is disabled using the “HAP” method (thanks to the Positive
Technologies for discovering this trick), however, it doesn’t throw
an error “because it can’t load a module”: it actually stops itself
in a graceful manner, by design.
[...]
The two approaches are similar in that they both stop the execution
of the ME during the hardware initialization (BUP) phase, but with
the ME disabled through the HAP method, the ME stops on its own,
without putting up a fight, potentially disabling things that the
forceful “me_cleaner” approach, with the “unexpected error” state,
wouldn’t have disabled. The PCI interface for example, is entirely
unable to communicate with the ME processor, and the status of the ME
is not even retrievable.
He slants Purism because they allegedly have a "mysterious founder [who]
somehow has a bottomless pit of money", provides with no proofs of his
allegations.
It costs millions of dollars to make their supposidly custom hardware
and smears FSF because they found out Purism's claims to be
true and their hardware to be among the most free available today.
Their hardware is anything but free and there are a variety of other
options out there.
And he
keeps peddling the hardware produced by Talos Engineering. Let's compare
Purism and Talos:
1) Purism is crystal about who run the company and who is working for them:
https://puri.sm/about/team/, https://puri.sm/about/board/
2) In the past they had Jacob Applelbaum and Stefano Zacchiroli (former
Debian Project Leader) in the Board of Advisors:
https://web.archive.org/web/20160322025039/https://puri.sm/about/
That doesn't mean anything or imply some type of endorsement of quality.
https://web.archive.org/web/20170105163722/https://puri.sm/about/advisory-board/
3) Talos is shrouded in secrecy, as nowhere in their site is available
a list of who's who: https://www.raptorcs.com/
It is a marketing company of raptor engineering which is owned by
timothy pearson.
4) They are backed by IBM, according to Taiidan:
https://www.mail-archive.com/dng@lists.dyne.org/msg17532.html
"They didn't have corporate backers before, now they do."
[...]
"Getting corporate backing isn't fishy, IBM wanted to support a POWER
workstation project via the OpenPOWER foundation."
As this is nowhere stated on talos' website I wonder how does Taiidan know
that IBM is behind them: does he work for Talos?
Because I am on the TALOS IRC and have asked the owner of raptor many
questions?
There is no "talos engineering" or "talos the company" - it is made by
raptor engineering/computing systems the same people who have made a
variety of libre firmware and coreboot contributions in the past such as
the fam10/fam15h native init code for coreboot, along with the firmware
and OpenBMC ports for the kgpe-d16 and kcma-d8 motherboards.
They are one of the more popular coreboot and firmware consultants firms
in america, you would know this if you were actually part of the
hardware freedom movement or have read the coreboot list.
5) Whatever Purism develops, they release and publish under an opensource
license and contribute code to Coreboot;
They currently have not contributed anything that does more than help
them sell their own products (ie: you can't use it on any other
motherboard)
6) Talos promises to let specs be public in the future, but there is nothing
available right now: https://www.raptorcs.com/content/base/software.html
And Taiidan is aware of this:
https://www.mail-archive.com/dng@lists.dyne.org/msg17532.html
"the public will get the spec sheets and HDL's when the hardware is
released"
This too I cannot find on their website, and no date is set.
Currently you have to email them for it, but there is a page being set
up as seen in the support section.
Why is
this? How does Taiidan know what they are going to do in the future?
I do my research and I read the TALOS IRC.
Why are people supposed to trust this anonymous poster?
7) Purism strives to produce a fully libre system, so much so that they
axed an initial plan to equip their laptops with NVidia GPUs.
If they really were "striving" they would have never had that plan in
the first place, the only reason they decided not do use a nvidia gpu is
because of community pressure - no one wanted to buy something so
obviously non-free.
At Talos
instead they value more vendor-bashing that producing the most libre
possible system:
I don't work for or receive money for anyone - I am unemployed right now.
It is ironic that you say that considering how many times purism has
bashed minifree as seen in my archived links.
https://www.mail-archive.com/dng@lists.dyne.org/msg17534.html
>>> as there are no open source non-intel gigabit NIC's
>> Is not having Intel hardware more important than having opensource
>> components inside a TALOS workstation?
> Yes it is.
It is considering that intel's latest network interfaces are not owner
controlled and have no documentation available for them, essentially
every time you buy a brand new intel product you are supporting further
anti-feature development.
That broadcom NIC has documentation available and there are efforts to
write a new firmware for it.
The FSF says that the T2 is still able to be RYF certified with that
issue without diluting the current rules (as an IOMMU isolates the
networking controllers, and that is the only drawback of the system) -
whereas purisms laptops will never be able to be RYF certified without
diluting the standards.
Compare having a black box supervisor processor and not having any free
hardware initiation at all to having free hardware init for everything
but an IOMMU isolated component.
8) Taiidan spreads FUD, disinformation and plot conspiracies against Purism
and provides with no evidence to back his claims:
"Purism is NOT free hardware and certainly not "grassroots" as their
mysterious founder somehow has a bottomless pit of money to burn on
hardware costs and propaganda campaigns.
What exactly about purism is free hardware?
Their hardware initiation is entirely done by binary blobs and there is
hardware enforced code signing on the boards black box supervisor
procesor (ME), the only way that is "free" hardware is if you change the
meaning of free.
Purism donates to their own crowd-funding campaigns to make them seem
more successful and whenever negative facts about them are posted on the
internet some random guy shows up to insist that the person is
mistaken."
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Libre-13-Self-Funding
"It turns out that it looks like the Librem 13 is being self-funded by
Todd Weaver, the CEO of Purism, in order to meet their goal with the
crowd-funded campaign ending on 17 September."
"Recently, the campaign seemed to surge by around 90,000 USD in a day.
Looking at the page before the surge and the live page, it showed only 4
extra names.
The first one in that list is Todd Weaver, the CEO of Purism. Basically,
Todd has unfairly contributed a large sum to his own campaign."
"they claim to have "disabled" ME [...] they have not as disabling ME is
both impossible and illegal."
(see https://puri.sm/learn/intel-me/ and
https://puri.sm/posts/deep-dive-into-intel-me-disablement/ to read how
this was done)
"(archived due to the powers that be removing these posts after
receiving political pressure)"
9) How much does it cost you believing anonymous people's promises about
their allegedly free and open hardware (except for components that are
open but are from Intel)?
So what exactly is open about anything that comes from intel?
https://secure.raptorcs.com/content/TL2WK2/purchase.html $4,925.00
Buying from proven.
Proven by whom? someone who works for purism?
The developers of ME cleaner and the researchers who have found the HAP
bit state that it doesn't disable ME.
The ME kernel still runs and can do as it pleases, the HAP bit
supposedly shuts it off after it is more than able to add a backdoor to
the system - how is that disabled?
Disabled is being able to physically disconnect the ME core and have the
system still function.
documentedly IME-disabled provider Purism costs you
$1,599 for their top-of-the line laptop.
The TALOS 2 board and CPU combo costs $2.5K which is a standard price
for server hardware in that performance class.
Non-free x86_64 servers from the major vendors such as Dell, HPE,
SuperMicro with comparable performance etc start at 5K for a barebones
high performance server and go up from there.
Truth is, Purism has been delivering products for years, their statements
are verifiable, just like their code, while Talos has nothing to show for
their words, sorry, for Taiidan's words, as their hardware offering page did
not progress beyond the "Pre-Order Acceptance" status:
Today: https://www.raptorcs.com/content/base/products.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20170707122844/https://www.raptorcs.com/content/base/products.html
They have been shipping them out to customers for months now, one of the
buyers had one on display at FOSDEM.
https://syslog-ng.com/blog/centos-dojo-fosdem-2018/
If you were to buy one you would be per-ordering part of the next batch
of motherboards which is generally how small batch hardware purchasing
works to prevent having too much unsold stock
A previous crowdfunding of theirs was turned down by the free hardware
community:
It wasn't "turned down", there was a lack of publicity for the type of
people who had the money to spend on it - the first TALOS cost too much
and the T2 is much less expensive and thus an actual shipping product.
It takes around $4M to do a full motherboard production run, that isn't
exactly chump change.
I would really like to know as to how purism is able to make multiple
custom laptops for much less than what it normally costs to produce a
motherboard.
14% funded
495 backers
$516,040 raised of the $3,700,000 goal.
Purism instead managed to capitalize from it's increasing popularity on
the crowdfunding front, too:
https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/
155.26% funded
4,339 backers
$2,328,966 raised of the $1,500,000 goal.
They are Purism's source of funding, together with their customers, not
just the not any "mysterious founder", Mr. Todd Weaver. The only mysterious
people and money are Taiidan and those behind Talos.
Cheaper products receive more backers and thus more total money (who
would have thought?) and todd contributes to his own campaigns to make
them appear more successful as referenced above.
I doubt that purism can make a custom phone for that price, it is
probably a whitebox rebadge.
There is no mystery about "those behind talos" - all that information is
freely available on the coreboot mailinglist, where raptors founder
frequently posts to help people with coreboot development and answer
questions.
It is a modified IBM romulus development board made available to the
general public by raptor engineering/computing systems, IBM assisted
raptor with their efforts via the OpenPOWER foundation as they wanted to
get a POWER workstation to market for those who develop POWER software.
_______________________________________________
Dng mailing list
Dng@lists.dyne.org
https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
