Free Software Foundation Endorses First Product Of 2020: A $59~79 USD 802.11n WiFi Card

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Free Software Foundation Endorses First Product Of 2020: A $59~79 USD 802.11n WiFi Card

We've seen a lot of odd products pick up the Free Software Foundation's "Respect Your Freedom" endorsement like a USB microphone, various re-branded motherboards, and even last year certified a USB to parallel printer cable. The latest product they are endorsing is a USD 802.11 a/b/g/n PCIe half-mini card starting out at $59 USD but going up to $79 for this outdated wireless adapter...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=FSF-59-USD-802.11n-WiFi

[tildearrow]

Guess I will wait 'til 2030 for my RYF-certified 802.11ac card.

[Michael]

Guess I will wait 'til 2030 for my RYF-certified 802.11ac card.

And adjusted for inflation + RYF inflation, probably $200~300

[Sonadow]

I can get a WiFi card with the exact chipset for less than $12 on TaoBao or AliExpress.

Or an M.2 Intel/Realtek 802.11ac WiFi card for the same price they are asking for.

[kbumsik]

I don't get this, what's special about this overpriced, ancient card? Neither its schematic is open nor its firmware is open.

In terms of driver openness and freedom shouldn't Intel hardware receive this certificate as well?

[ddriver]

The FSF is such a joke, acting all noble and stuff, as if they are saving humanity from abusive monopolies, when in reality it is just a decorated business model catered at enterprise business clients.

Not to mention that GPL is practically one of the biggest contributor to MS entrapping end users in a monopoly that is very much alive till this day, simply because the smaller makers of end user software opted to protect their product secrets and abstain from supporting an alternative OS even after there was one available. Only big corporate entities poured money into developing "free" software that servers their needs, because they have the resources to protect their IP while out in the open and still make billions on "free" software every year.


"Tell Microsoft to upcycle Windows 7 by releasing it as free software" - if they don't want to offer it even as a paid product, what are the odds of agreeing to release it for free? I know that the initiative is supposed to be "admirable", but I just can't force myself that far, the best I can do is equal parts sad and ridiculous, pretty much cancelling each other to a meh.

[ed31337]

Hmm, at $59 to $79 USD, I could buy a Raspberry Pi 4 for less and not only get 802.11n wireless, but also 5GHz 802.11ac, Gigabit Ethernet, Bluetooth 5.0, BLE, USB 3.0, 4GB of RAM, dual HDMI, and a quad core ARM processor running open source Raspbian (debian) Linux.

[ddriver]

Hmm, at $59 to $79 USD, I could buy a Raspberry Pi 4 for less and not only get 802.11n wireless, but also 5GHz 802.11ac, Gigabit Ethernet, Bluetooth 5.0, BLE, USB 3.0, 4GB of RAM, dual HDMI, and a quad core ARM processor running open source Raspbian (debian) Linux.

But none of that translates into food Stallman gets to eat to ward off starvation.

[fguerraz]

Guess I will wait 'til 2030 for my RYF-certified 802.11ac card.

Except it won't happen, the FCC mandates closed source firmwares for anything that uses DFS channels.

[Michael_S]

The FSF is such a joke, acting all noble and stuff, as if they are saving humanity from abusive monopolies, when in reality it is just a decorated business model catered at enterprise business clients.

Not to mention that GPL is practically one of the biggest contributor to MS entrapping end users in a monopoly that is very much alive till this day, simply because the smaller makers of end user software opted to protect their product secrets and abstain from supporting an alternative OS even after there was one available. Only big corporate entities poured money into developing "free" software that servers their needs, because they have the resources to protect their IP while out in the open and still make billions on "free" software every year.


"Tell Microsoft to upcycle Windows 7 by releasing it as free software" - if they don't want to offer it even as a paid product, what are the odds of agreeing to release it for free? I know that the initiative is supposed to be "admirable", but I just can't force myself that far, the best I can do is equal parts sad and ridiculous, pretty much cancelling each other to a meh.

You're attacking a symptom, not the disease here. The core problem is that it's profitable to trade in proprietary software and less profitable to trade in free-as-in-freedom software, and nothing any free software organization does will change that. The FSF isn't causing the problem, they aren't making it worse. They just can't make a difference when all of the fully free, top to bottom free software projects in the world combined (Red Hat, Debian, FSF, SFC, Mozilla, etc...) take in less revenue and donations in a quarter than Microsoft, or Apple, or Google, or Oracle takes in in a month.

I want free software to be everywhere, but I've realized that it will never happen under capitalism.