As people mention the Chaos Communication Congress: Richard Stallmann was there and he gave a talk. He mentioned that running free software and buying only hardware which is supported by free software is often the less convenient choice.
And unless people show that they won't buy shiny hardware X due to the vendor forcing them to use proprietary blobs, the situation will not improve. PC manufacturers such as Lenovo (in collaboration with Intel) will continue to lock out Coreboot from their ThinkPads because customers will buy them anyway.
And for SageJeff defending Intel: I consider your argument very poor. Intel gave hardware vendors a way to lock down the computer, but they did not ensure that users could override this even though they were in a position to do so. So Intel is just as guilty here.
And unless people show that they won't buy shiny hardware X due to the vendor forcing them to use proprietary blobs, the situation will not improve. PC manufacturers such as Lenovo (in collaboration with Intel) will continue to lock out Coreboot from their ThinkPads because customers will buy them anyway.
And for SageJeff defending Intel: I consider your argument very poor. Intel gave hardware vendors a way to lock down the computer, but they did not ensure that users could override this even though they were in a position to do so. So Intel is just as guilty here.
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