> Chris, you're missing the point about libreboot entirely. Without it, there
would be *zero* viable options for systems
> that respect the users' freedom. You're also dismissing the hard work that
we put into the libreboot project, every
> day. We've done more than your company has done, in the last 2 years,
compared to your company's entire ~6 years
> of existence.
This isn't entirely true. There are other options coming out in the near
future that will be a lot better than the Lenovo or Chromebooks here and
we're the *ONLY* entity funding said projects. We've been working on various
projects that have been leading up to this for a very long time. Your
Chromebook only works because of the *work we were involved in*.
Have you ever even talked to Allwinner? Did you work toward getting the code
released at all? No. You didn't. We did.
I've got nothing against you working on free'ing X86. I just don't think it
is the right approach. I think it is a wasted effort when we have *other*
more important projects that need to be worked on that'll make the difference
between the community having a more permanent solution and never having one
ever.
Free'ing coreboot is not a huge task relative to porting coreboot to new
models. You got lucky with the one Lenovo- it's not something easily
repeatable. The other models were already ported to.
> About the "promotion of Lenovo" argument that ThinkPenguin puts out; this
is spin.
It's not. I've stuck to my words that Lenovo is a horrible company I'd rather
not be promoting. The promotion is not intentional on your part. And I'm not
blaming you for it. Just I think its the wrong direction.
> We're not promoting Lenovo. We're providing free boot firmware. It makes no
difference which laptop we use.
You had no choice but to use Lenovo or Apple because those were the only real
options. The work to port coreboot to them was already done (except
apparently one model, but you got lucky, because of illicitly obtained info,
which implicates anybody who bought your laptops or downloads libreboot).
It's no different than us building off Intel. There aren't any good options.
> Gluglug was (and still is, now as Minifree Ltd) what funded the Libreboot
project. But worse than that, it was
> hypocritical of ThinkPenguin to want to sell these laptops, given
everything that they had said in the past.
Not by any means. We didn't want to do it- you pushed us into it. If any of
this was remotely an accurate description of it then we probably would be
selling these systems today. You played games with us and I didn't want to do
it in the first place. I still disagree with the approach! There are plenty
of people who disagree with me. And thats find. But you don't need to attack
me for it.
> it without giving anything back in return,
We've given hundreds of thousands of dollars back the to the community and
*HAVE FUNDED THE CORE WORK* to design and free components. I don't care
what-so-ever about libreboot and if we ever wanted to use coreboot we'd
probably free it ourselves. Acting as if this is some great project to
benefit man kind is a joke. It's not. It's a small project that might matter
more in a different universe.
Just because we haven't released a 100% free laptop doesn't mean squat. We
will when the time is right. We're funding multiple people to work on related
software development projects and engineers to actually design the hardware
which will be significantly more important long term.
We don't need libreboot or coreboot *at all* and never have. A number of
people who are actively working on designs that will lead to genuine free
software laptops are funded by us. Not hacks that indirectly hurt our
community.
I'm not discrediting the work coreboot developers did. I think that work was
worthwhile. I even think libreboot is worthwhile to a limited extent, but it
also has a down side to it in distracting people from where the real progress
is being made/needed.
