Purism Librem 13 Funded, But Will Likely Fail To Provide Freedom & Privacy

[chithanh]

Which is not a lie,

At what point the omission of truth becomes a lie is of course a philosophical question that you are welcome to have your own views on.
The email's author apparently thinks that the line has been crossed here, and I tend to agree with him.

That's not the bone I saw being picked, the bone I saw being picked was the author throwing a tantrum over Librem not doing enough in their eyes, and demanding something even less likely to ever happen.

In my understanding, and having followed the controversy from the first libreboot blog post, it is all about the dishonesty of Purism. Had the company not touted the freedom of their device and how they "are working to have that binary freed", nobody in the free software community would have even bothered to write about this.

Oh I agree, but if the author wants "Free"(tm) then that's what he should be using.

No. The author, and the FSF, and the "FSF nuts" want free software. Remember, for them, free software is an ethical choice, not a practical one.

[Luke_Wolf]

At what point the omission of truth becomes a lie is of course a philosophical question that you are welcome to have your own views on.
The email's author apparently thinks that the line has been crossed here, and I tend to agree with him.

I would not consider not including probability of success (even in a situation such as this where it is extremely unlikely) to be an omission of truth. As long as they have not claimed they already have feature X as opposed to that they are working towards trying to get feature X and they disclose the current state, then that is full disclosure, Dealing with probability of success is and has always been caveat emptor when we're talking about investment into a new product, as opposed to purchase of an existing product.

In my understanding, and having followed the controversy from the first libreboot blog post, it is all about the dishonesty of Purism. Had the company not touted the freedom of their device and how they "are working to have that binary freed", nobody in the free software community would have even bothered to write about this.

Oh don't kid yourself, they would have done it anyway. This is the FSF we're talking about after all, this is pretty much their whole schtick.

No. The author, and the FSF, and the "FSF nuts" want free software. Remember, for them, free software is an ethical choice, not a practical one.

Which is exactly why Sun SPARC systems are perfect for them.

[profoundWHALE]

Luke_Wolf is right. They didn't lie, it's an investment into a new product, and FSF still would have done something along those lines.

[chithanh]

I would not consider not including probability of success (even in a situation such as this where it is extremely unlikely) to be an omission of truth.

Nobody says that they need to include the precise probability of success. But as was pointed out by libreboot developers, Google has already tried it unsuccessfully, and Google Chromebooks currently own like 3% of the worldwide PC market. So it is extremely unlikely that Librem which is orders of magnitude smaller can make Intel budge. Librem is raising hopes they cannot ever dream of fulfilling here.

Plus there is the issue of code signing. Even if Intel by some miracle released the source code to their firmware, you could not install it into the device unless Intel released their secret keys too, which would require an even bigger miracle.

Oh don't kid yourself, they would have done it anyway. This is the FSF we're talking about after all, this is pretty much their whole schtick.

They already said with the non-free firmware it was just going to be another Linux laptop. When is the last time the FSF made a fuss or even commented on some company releasing a Linux laptop?

Which is exactly why Sun SPARC systems are perfect for them.

No it is not, because no suitable hardware exists. As I pointed out there is no SPARC notebook which uses the OpenSPARC design. Also the Sun servers from that era do contain proprietary firmware (in the ILOM for example).
And besides there are already the Lemote Yeeloong and the ThinkPads which run free software, so why bother with a SPARC system that does not even exist?

[The Walking Glitch]

>Intel

Literally the opposite of free. With AMD, at least you don't have a backdoor at the very core of your computer.

[Luke]

That OpenSPARC is an 8 core design, with true independant cores unlike AMD bulldozer. It would make one hell of a video editing machine if I could find one of the chips whose design was opensourced, or if I had the resources to have one made. Having it made now would allow for a major die shrink, in 2006 Intel was still at 60+ nm, Bulldozer in 2011 December was at 33. Even a board full of fpga chips set up this way could make a very serious video editing workstation with 100% auditablity, suitable for ultra-high security video made on encrypted disks from classifed raw clips. If air-gapped from the network, even the NSA would only be able to watch the edited(censored) published video and weep, knowing the raw clips were totally out of reach, encrypted with huge keys on hardware and software with no back doors at all.

[Licaon]

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/12/qubes-os-will-ship-pre-installed-on-purisms-security-focused-librem-13-laptop/