@wyatt8740@tech.lgbt@amszmidt@mastodon.social if you can't trust code that you didn't write yourself at this point just move into the woods with no electricity, not even foss software is good. It's just needless paranoia.
> releasing a patch to make your computer work better
how can you tell? yeah, it might fix a security hole they put in there, but it also makes the cpu much slower, so you'll be driven to buy a newer one from them. but what else does it do? you can't tell. there's the channel for enshittification.
@Jessica@wyatt8740 For the FSF, no, it is not. Software freedom is more important than your perceived security of running unknown, random blobs of code.
@Jessica@wyatt8740 Yet another tangent. It was you who claimed that security was paramount, and it is a fact that non-free software cannot be introspected.
The whole point of software freedom is to have the right, and to make the power differential between those who write software and those who use software equal. Just like free speech, not everyone needs to exercise it, but one should still have the right to do so.
@Jessica@wyatt8740 If you, Intel, or AMD or whoever can do something on your computer, I should also be able to do it on mine. If it is more secure, better, etc is quite irrelevant to the topic.
@amszmidt@mastodon.social@wyatt8740@tech.lgbt I also have the freedom to choose to install nonfree and proprietary software :02shrug: I love when my computer works :blobcatthumbsup:
@Jessica@wyatt8740 I am also not any _less_ free by ignoring them. So it is a neutral stance to simply reject firmware updates. Accepting them, you accept that non-free software, and that letting someone else control your computer with software is OK.
@Jessica@wyatt8740 No, I don't. There is the old saying "to buy a pig in a sack" -- which is exactly it. I have a right to know what my computer does and control it, and source code is a prerequisite for that.
@Jessica Yes, the hardware is proprietary, news is at 11.
All the software running on the CPU is free mind you.
I wouldn't hesitate to install free microcode updates that came with the source code, but for some reason the manufacturer refuses to provide that and even obfuscates how the microcode works up to the point that I suspect malice.
@Jessica chrome is a pretty shitty buggy browser that eats way to many resources.
If you don't have enough RAM to surrender to chrome and still have some to spare, your computer will indeed stop working usefully for anything else while you're running chrome.
@Jessica >all the micro code updates that make your computer work better Please prove that claim with evidence.
Specture "fixing" updates actually make your computer work worse, as the CPU is slowed down by mitigations that attempt to mitigate proprietary attacks (of course intel has gone and tried to get benchmarkers to agree to a proprietary restriction where they agree to not benchmark the difference before and after microcode updates).
>it's almost as if they release patches to patch the cpu or smth It's unclear as to what they change.
Intel typically releases defective CPUs and then later release a microcode update that makes the CPU slightly less unstable, but it's unclear what else is in that first update and what the following updates do (most microcode updates don't even come with a changelog, just a version number).
I just get non-defective CPUs that are stable without proprietary updates myself.
I would be glad to patch my CPU with free software, but I'm not patching my CPU with proprietary malware.
@Suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com all the micro code updates that make your computer work better it's almost as if they release patches to patch the cpu or smth
@Jessica I did not say that proprietary software will make your computer explode, it rather ensures your computer never works properly, as all software has bugs and it's not feasible to fix most kinds of bugs in proprietary software (as you don't have the source code, or even if you have such, you don't have a license to modify it) - you're entirely dependent on the proprietary master, which in some cases will accept a bug report and then tell you to purchase the next version and see if the bug is fixed (in most cases it never is).
Free software may not work perfectly from the start, but as time goes one, more and more bugs get fixed by the community until the software has an error rate far lower than any piece of proprietary software.
@Suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com okay but that's not what I'm talking about at all just because it's proprietary doesn't mean your computer will just explode or smth
@amerika >Most of the best software is proprietary. [Citation needed].
In my experience the vast majority is utter shit, except for rare cases where the software was developed by actually competent developers - but that isn't a good thing, as the proprietary temptation is increased.
Of course the proprietary software companies are very skilled in building up the illusion that their software is the best ("'it must be, it's from a business and I paid a fortune for it"), but that often isn't the reality.
The truth is, even based off functionality alone, most of the best software in the world is free.
All proprietary compilers are garbage compared to GCC for example.
>Lots of open source is simply clones of that, and lots of what open source GNU/Jihad against "open source"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yes, a lot of free software is based off someone looking at a crappy proprietary program and writing a free replacement of it, which eventually becomes far better than what was replaced - it doesn't make sense to write everything from scratch and reinvent the wheel always does it?
>has created is needless complexity. Proprietary licenses on software has rather created needless complexity, as that software is unusable, as you cannot share it, understand it, run it and/or modify it in freedom.
Most of the best software is proprietary. Lots of open source is simply clones of that, and lots of what open source has created is needless complexity.
The quality of a project is determined by the people who do it.
photoshop and autocad are bad examples as they're terrible, although they achieve certain base functionality and it's indeed the case that either wouldn't have achieved even that if it wasn't for how most of such software is composed of proprietarized free software (due to the poor choice of the developers to use a pushover license) to implement most functionality.
iff you ignore the parts they lifted from free platforms
ie take the parts out of autocad or photoshop or whatever that were developed by free software hackers [ the the pre-GNU stuff developers took for granted would be free forever ] out and you won't be left with a working program
but if it takes accepting nonfree software to run free software, that's not achieving the goal, that's giving up software freedom, because that nonfree software takes your freedom away
from the perspective of someone else who runs both that nonfree software and some other piece of nonfree software, replacing one of them with free software is a step towards software freedom, but does not achieve the goal of software freedom
@amszmidt@mastodon.social I mean wouldn't the goal of software freedom be to put free software in as many hands as possible least that's what I would think :02shrug:
@Jessica A low cost, computer that is decent enough would be amazing .. but that isn't the goal of Software Freedom. It is immensely complicated to make a totally free computer since all the fabs are in the hands of nasty corp (Intel, AMD, Apple, Broadcom, ...). Software Freedom needs to compromise with the limits of physical stuff, e.g., drawing a line in what is or isn't ok when it comes to firmware -- even if suboptimal. Can't do everything at once.
when you celebrate you can decide whether or not to install a certain blob that claims to fix a bug, and that this is some freedom, you appear to be missing that the supplier is denying you the freedom you should also have to see what other changes the blob would bring onto your computer, and to decide which of them you want and which of them you don't, and to improve on them, and to help others. you're celebrating the crumbs thrown at you so that you'll leave the bigger piece of the pie to those who control you.
trusting that the blob suppliers have your best interest in mind when they push updates, instead of aiming to expand their power and profits through the control over you that you grant them, is naïve at best
no free software distro can do that. users control free software.
maybe what you're trying to say is that you don't like distros that don't offer convenience for you to shoot yourself in the feet. that presumed feeling of yours sounds plausible to me, it fits with what you've written. but it's a matter of convenience, not of freedom.
@lxo@gnusocial.net You know what also takes user freedom away? distros that refuse to let you use proprietary software. software freedom at the cost of user freedom isn't an acceptable use case for most people