On 09.01.2018 22:18, Tobias Geerinckx-Rice wrote:
Katherine,
Not really an answer to your question, I'm afraid. Just some thoughts I
had after hitting ‘Send’ on my previous non-answer.
Katherine Cox-Buday wrote on 09/01/18 at 21:13:
Tobias Geerinckx-Rice <m...@tobias.gr> writes:
[...] how do we square not recommending proprietary globs like this
in official channels with giving users all knowledge required to
decide for themselves?
Yes, this exactly.
It's a unique (hm, is it?) situation pitting the ideals of copyleft
I don't think it's unique per se, but it is of another degree entirely
than, for example, asking users to buy a €15 RYF-certified wireless card
instead of pushing proprietary firmware to the one they already have.[0]
The rationale there being that freedom is worth the price, and
(implicitly but importantly) that this price is affordable for anyone
who values their freedom and owns a computer to begin with.
I think that's reasonable.
against the welfare of users. If an opaque microcode is required to
successfully mitigate these bugs, what is the moral stance to take> I
don't have an answer and that's why I'm asking here :)
Logically, it's perfectly sound to extrapolate the above policy to CPUs
and entire systems. I'm half surprised someone hasn't done so yet: buy a
Free(er) system, and you're arguably much better off than with even a
patched non-Free one. And you're voting with your wallet. We all win!
The Talos II is a free-er system. And its processor (the POWER9) does
not seem to be affected by Meltdown/Sprectre [1].
[1] https://mobile.twitter.com/RaptorCompSys?p=s
Morally, at least in the short-to-medium term, I'm not convinced.
The smell of privilege becomes hard to ignore with the costs and other
assumptions involved.
Like you, I'm very curious to know what others think.
* * *
Note: despite my musing above, I don't *actually* expect GNU Guix to
start shipping or even recommending proprietary software, including
microcode. It opens cans of worms and then the worms get everywhere.
Kind regards,
T G-R
[0]: I'll not address the question of whether a device with proprietary
firmware that you can or must update is more or less free than a device
with proprietary firmware that you can't.
The Free Software Foundation treats programs stored in ROM as hardware,
this is documented in [2] and [3].
[2] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/applying-free-sw-criteria.html
[3] https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/free-bios.html
Tobias Platem
