The POWER8 Libre System Looks Set To Fail, Now There's An AMD Libre System Effort

[pal666]

Don't you agree that the Talos system would be as open as it could be? Especially considering current Intel/AMD/etc stuff and their microcode blobs?

i agree that it brings too little additional openness for too much additional cost. btw, did you replace proprietary firmware in your keyboard and harddrive?

[Davidovitch]

i agree that it brings too little additional openness for too much additional cost.

It is only now I understand what your position is. Fair enough, but although I agree it is a lot of money, I disagree it is "too little additional openness" from a practical point of view. For example: you can prevent a vendor shutting down your system remotely, I think that is plenty additional openness. My point is that I believe we need to accept that if we want truly open systems, we will have to fund its development, and we will have to start somewhere (for example with the firmware). As the Talos attempt has shown, such development is not cheap for various reasons (as explained in their final update), and the current big hardware vendors are not going to fund said development for us. I have no experience in hardware development whatsoever, but based on all the projects that have followed the last years (and again referring to Talos' last update on Crowd Supply) it seems that there is strong correlation between the openness of a system and its price. To my understanding, a fully open system requires the development of most of the required tech from the ground up (no one will license or sell you the required tech just so you can open it up), which, in my opinion, explains again why it is so expensive.

[slacka]

As much as I love the idea of this project, Leah has lost all credibly with me. She's a self-absorbed, delusional drama queen. I don't trust her with my money and don't want to support someone who is so poisonous to our community.

[madscientist159]

As much as I love the idea of this project, Leah has lost all credibly with me. She's a self-absorbed, delusional drama queen. I don't trust her with my money and don't want to support someone who is so poisonous to our community.

As it turns out this was a wise decision. Minifree has officially stated that they will not pay any of the contracted fee for the work Raptor Engineering did to port the KCMA-D8. The port was delivered on time, upstreamed last year, and verified to be functional. While at one point Minifree may have helped the libre systems cause, in its current form it has caused significant damage to the overall reputation of libre systems. Forcing vendors to do work for free is not a good way to advance the cause of libre systems, and in fact shows the necessity of retaining copyright of proprietary firmware at all times.

Raptor Engineering was involved in the creation of a replacement, truly community-drive project called librecore that aims to work with upstream coreboot to keep blob-free systems available, while at the same time exploring modern boot methods in this libre environment. Raptor Engineering offers reasonably priced build-to-order systems and ROMs based on these existing blob-free machines, and unlike the current situation at Minifree the proceeds from those sales go 100% to both the maintenance of the coreboot support for those boards and to the development of new libre-friendly hardware and libre software. Raptor Engineering also offers preprogrammed 16MB Flash ROMs for those wanting to roll their own machines; the stock 2MB ROM is too small for embedded Linux.