The FSF Has Certified A USB To Parallel Printer Cable For Respecting Your Freedom

[Bsdisbetter]

No manufacturer or distributor is going to bother to go through the certification process unless there is a customer with a need. So, what is silly to you is important to someone else. I find it amusing that anyone would ever complain about free and open hardware.

I find it funny people need it to be 'certified' by some foundation...

[andyprough]

Actually the RYF certification process explicitly forbids RYF'ing a product that also advertises "Works with Mac" or "Works with Windows", so generally, most any manufacturer hoping to sell a lot of hardware would avoid RYF from the start.

You said "hoping to sell a lot of hardware", I did not. I said if "there is a customer with a need". Two very different situations.

I agree - anyone looking to get rich in the present culture would explicitly sell to Mac and Windows users, but the distributor selling these items, ThinkPenguin, does not do that. They've been getting stuff certified by FSF for a long time, and I'll bet they know the needs of their customer base pretty well.

[tildearrow]

Actually the RYF certification process explicitly forbids RYF'ing a product that also advertises "Works with Mac" or "Works with Windows", so generally, most any manufacturer hoping to sell a lot of hardware would avoid RYF from the start.

Where's my freedom to use the cable under Windows?

[andyprough]

Where's my freedom to use the cable under Windows?

"Compatible With MS Windows XP, Vista, and 7" - https://www.thinkpenguin.com/gnu-lin...e-tpe-usbparal

[Jaxad0127]

Where's my freedom to use the cable under Windows?

There is no restriction on that, and product documentation can specify compatibility with them. The RYF certification doesn't want to endorse those non free OSes or imply you need to use them to use the product, hence the banning of emblems/badges for Windows, OSX, etc.

[Chugworth]

Actually the RYF certification process explicitly forbids RYF'ing a product that also advertises "Works with Mac" or "Works with Windows", so generally, most any manufacturer hoping to sell a lot of hardware would avoid RYF from the start.

Hah! The FSF is quite an amusing group. They mean well, I think. But they live outside of reality. I could just imagine what a FSF utopia would look like:

"Now Rockstar, your next release of Grand Theft Auto must include the complete source code and all development assets. Nooo, nobody would use that to pirate the game or make cheats for online multiplayer. Of course not."

[swagg_boi]

I for one will be discarding my current proprietary parallel-to-USB 1.1 cable (which I have long suspected of not respecting me at all) in favour of this certifiably freedom-respecting cable

[Bsdisbetter]

I for one will be discarding my current proprietary parallel-to-USB 1.1 cable (which I have long suspected of not respecting me at all) in favour of this certifiably freedom-respecting cable

I bet you'll be dead and in the ground before they certify an HDMI cable...

I can only think of very old scanners and printers using parallel in the PC/Apple world and that was about 20 years ago, before USB had any foothold. I know Apple's System 7.6 was awesome but seriously you've got to at least upgrade to OS9, it had USB support...

[starshipeleven]

Hah! The FSF is quite an amusing group. They mean well, I think. But they live outside of reality. I could just imagine what a FSF utopia would look like:

"Now Rockstar, your next release of Grand Theft Auto must include the complete source code and all development assets. Nooo, nobody would use that to pirate the game or make cheats for online multiplayer. Of course not."

Are you perhaps assuming that this didn't happen already with a fully closed source game?

Who is the one out of touch with reality?

[Zajec]

How do we know that microcode pre-installed on the Atheros AR9280 or Atheros AR9281 doesn't do anything nasty and "Respect Your Freedom"?