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Purism Talks Up The Librem 5 Smartphone Boot Speed, Price Increase Coming

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  • #41
    Originally posted by starshipeleven View Post
    "no intellectual property" is exactly the same as the batshit insane level of IP enforcement you have in the USA.

    In both cases the strong has free reign to abuse the weak.
    Can you elaborate? I don't see why a free-for-all approach would cause trouble. You can always steal good ideas from the leaders and sell them without paying a penny for research. The only thing they can do to you is threaten you or try to buy you out.

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    • #42
      Originally posted by DoMiNeLa10 View Post
      Can you elaborate? I don't see why a free-for-all approach would cause trouble. You can always steal good ideas from the leaders and sell them without paying a penny for research.
      Who are you selling them if they can just legally copy them on their own. Buying and selling ideas exists because IP exists. If everyone can copy it freely value drops through the floor.

      Who is buying Linux licenses? None. Who is buying Apache webserver licenses? No fucking one.
      People that don't want to pay for RHEL or SLES use CentOS or OpenSUSE Leap, for free. You are not paying for the software but for the support, or certifications.

      Also, I would really like to know what will you do after you acquired a blueprint of some complex device you can't manufacture on your own. Say you get an ARM core low-level circuit blueprint. What you are going to do.

      The main reason patents were invented was because in many cases the inventors don't have the budget or ability to actually build or mass-produce products of their own designs. Even something dead-simple like mouse traps.

      The theory behind the concept of IP was that Johnny Normie had a good idea but no large scale production facility, patented it and then a bigger company that has actually the access to serious hardware could pay him license fees to manufacture the products using it. Both are happy.

      Where it went wrong is mostly in the US where you can patent bullshit like rectangles with round corners (this specific was done by Apple) and then use that to patent-troll your competitors (in this specific case it was used to troll Samsung).
      It also went MONUMENTALLY wrong with copyright and creative media, which is the media equivalent of patents, the same concept of IP but applied to art and non-physical stuff like software.


      But anyway, even if you don't agree IP can be a solution, the problem it was supposed to address is still real, it won't go away. And removing IP has some significant drawbacks you are clearly missing.

      Without some way to protect his own ideas, Johnny Normie the inventor is fucked.
      He has 0 incentive to design anything he can't physically make on his own, so any research will happen in a company R&D, plus any company can just waltz in his shop, copy his product, manufacture it for a fraction of the price in its assembly lines, and outcompete him easily.

      Ideas and things will stay secret and die as secrets. Leading to many lost technology and reinventing the wheel. Patents are public by definition, and once they run out everyone can go and take them.

      This would also be disastrous for opensource projects, because with no IP there is no more copyright, which means software licenses cease to exist. Now everyone can come, steal Linux and integrate it wherever they please with no obligation to publish the sources of their modifications or even acknowledge that they used Linux at all.
      The other GPLv3 obligations (no tivoization) in a GPLv3 software would also be equally null and void.
      Last edited by starshipeleven; 07 June 2019, 03:43 AM.

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      • #43
        Originally posted by starshipeleven View Post
        Who are you selling them if they can just legally copy them on their own. Buying and selling ideas exists because IP exists. If everyone can copy it freely value drops through the floor.

        The main reason patents were invented was because in many cases the inventors don't have the budget or ability to actually build or mass-produce products of their own designs. Even something dead-simple like mouse traps.

        The theory behind the concept of IP was that Johnny Normie had a good idea but no large scale production facility, patented it and then a bigger company that has actually the access to serious hardware could pay him license fees to manufacture the products using it. Both are happy.
        What if you happen to have means to produce something at a scale? You could sell "stolen" IP to people who can't manufacture it.

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        • #44
          Originally posted by DoMiNeLa10 View Post

          From what I remember, it's impossible to support 802.11ac with free software, so that choice makes a lot of sense.
          That depends on what you call software and how pedantic you are willing to be. There are several 802.11ac chipsets with perfectly good free/libre drivers. The firmware is one problematic part, but I've always found Stallman's ideas regarding non-free firmware slightly nonsensical.

          What if the (non-free) firmware technically exists, but is baked to the onboard ROM? I suppose that's OK because otherwise you can't ever prove anything. Now, what if the ROM is not on-board but rather resides in a flash chip sitting directly beside the main SoC? Still OK? Then what's the difference if the exact same firmware is not stored in a ROM, but loaded from the main system? Where's the problem?

          So, I'd say, there are many perfectly fine 802.11ac chips on the market, and Purism's choice doesn't make any sense. ...Well... Name checks out. They're being purists for no reason.

          Originally posted by DoMiNeLa10 View Post
          The idea of a "free" phone does not, though. Having a baseband processor in your device undoes any attempts at achieving freedom.
          Why? Quite the inverse. AFAIK, Purism went to great lengths to isolate the cellular modem from the main system.

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          • #45
            Originally posted by DoMiNeLa10 View Post
            What if you happen to have means to produce something at a scale? You could sell "stolen" IP to people who can't manufacture it.
            I don't understand what you mean here. Can you clarify?

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            • #46
              Originally posted by intelfx View Post
              Why? Quite the inverse. AFAIK, Purism went to great lengths to isolate the cellular modem from the main system.
              Yes, their modem is connected over USB. USB allows no DMA (direct memory access) so the modem can't access anything outside of what the main processor sends over the USB bus.

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              • #47
                Originally posted by intelfx View Post
                Why? Quite the inverse. AFAIK, Purism went to great lengths to isolate the cellular modem from the main system.
                Cellphones aren't much besides tracking devices. The idea of having a "free phone" simply makes no sense, because you can't have a baseband processor on a device and have it respect your freedom, no matter how well isolated it is.

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                • #48
                  Originally posted by starshipeleven View Post
                  I don't understand what you mean here. Can you clarify?
                  Consider the situation where you happen to have a factory. You could use someone's IP and avoid research costs.

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                  • #49
                    Originally posted by DoMiNeLa10 View Post
                    Cellphones aren't much besides tracking devices. The idea of having a "free phone" simply makes no sense, because you can't have a baseband processor on a device and have it respect your freedom, no matter how well isolated it is.
                    If you can't deal with people bothering you on the phone it's your own issue. Don't blame the technology.

                    In this specific case, the "free phone" means that the baseband processor can't snoop on what you are doing in the phone, nothing more.

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                    • #50
                      Originally posted by DoMiNeLa10 View Post
                      Consider the situation where you happen to have a factory. You could use someone's IP and avoid research costs.
                      You keep assuming that people and companies would keep producing new IP at the same rate, even if they know will be copied. That's madness.

                      As I said most commoners won't do it, because they know someone can just come and take it.

                      Companies will not have huge incentive to innovate either, as any innovation will be copied. High tech and pharmaceuticals will be hit harder than most.

                      Progress will slow down significantly, and unless you have some benevolent communist dictatorship leading the way by buying up companies and dumping money into stuff just because they see it fit, or can steal IP from outside, it's not going to be pretty in the long run.

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