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   Dushman (dushman@hollow.raccoon.quest)'s status on Wednesday, 19-Mar-2025 23:04:11 JST Dushman

   FSF/GNU's policy on firmware/microcode is stupid and ideoligical cop out. According to them proprietary software is fine as long as it's stored in rom, but god forbid if you want to install a microcode update that mitigates specter/meltdown for example.

   • Embed this notice
     Johnny Peligro (mischievoustomato@tsundere.love)'s status on Wednesday, 19-Mar-2025 23:04:08 JST Johnny Peligro

     in reply to
     @dushman
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     翠星石 (suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com)'s status on Thursday, 20-Mar-2025 15:08:41 JST 翠星石

     in reply to
     @dushman Despite being proven wrong time and time again, you still cope and seethe.
     
     There is no firmware - there is MaskROM hardware that contains circuits.
     
     Of course the hardware is proprietary (all hardware is) and of course they also welcome free hardware designs, but even then, the resulting manufactured hardware would still be proprietary; https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-hardware-designs.en.html
     
     
     They don't hesitate to point out that installing a microcode update is installing proprietary software software update, that doesn't respect the users freedom and that doesn't have source code.
     
     If you review the license on the microcode, it quite clearly contains malware; "No reverse engineering, decompilation, or disassembly of this software is permitted."
     
     
     If the Free Software Foundation was to start recommending convenient proprietary software, it would become the Proprietary Software Foundation due to such ruinous compromise; https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/compromise.html
     
     Spectre and Meltdown are vulnerabilities that are only a problem if you run proprietary malware on your computer; https://www.fsfla.org/ikiwiki/blogs/lxo/pub/who-is-afraid-of-spectre-and-meltdown.en.html
     
     You are perfectly safe from any of those kind of attacks if you don't run proprietary malware on your computer.
     
     Even with all the proprietary microcode updates installed on your computer, if you execute proprietary malware, you are not safe, as more and more vulnerabilities keep being found (some which can only be fixed in hardware) and intel fairly quickly stops releasing microcode updates - therefore "staying secure against the latest attacks" would entail throwing out your computer and buying a new one every 1-2 years (which is ridiculous).
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     翠星石 (suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com)'s status on Thursday, 20-Mar-2025 15:22:23 JST 翠星石

     in reply to

     • ♡ miss olivia ♡
     @voltrina @dushman You are been lied to - Intel Wi-Fi cards are specifically designed to always take the users freedom with proprietary software.
     
     Intel cards contain a malicious maskROM circuit (malicious circuits are just as unacceptable as malicious software) that implements a bootloader that checks the signature of software to load, to make sure it's proprietary software from intel and not a free replacement.
     
     That's right, Intel Wi-Fi cards are designed to be cryptographically impossible to write free replacement software for!
     
     
     ath9k cards are just as proprietary hardware wise, as they also contain maskROM circuits (a larger amount of circuits, but that's irrelevant really), but ath9k cards don't appear to contain any malicious circuits and you can use them with a 100% free driver, therefore unlike Intel Wi-Fi cards, ath9k cards respect your freedom.
     
     
     If somehow such crypto was to be broken on the Intel Wi-Fi cards (I doubt it, as I believe it's properly done RSA) and a free replacement was written, the result would be a card just as proprietary as an ath9k card, except with more convenience, as you could write all of the driver to no longer handle Wi-Fi like garbage (due to the limited clocking range of the PLL's, the likeliness of bandpass filters and the hardware design, Intel Wi-Fi cards could not be a generic SDR, they could just do Wi-Fi).
     
     That frankly isn't going to happen, as everyone who cares about freedom just grabs a cheap ath9k card and plugs it in and it just works and works well.
     
     
     Also, if you don't like maskROM that contains microprocessor instructions, I recommend the ath5k cards, as they contain no microprocessor.
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     ♡ miss olivia ♡ (voltrina@social.freedombits.org)'s status on Thursday, 20-Mar-2025 15:22:25 JST ♡ miss olivia ♡

     in reply to
     @dushman if you think about it, intel cards with loadable firmware are actually freer
     
     you can reverse engineer the proprietary firmware and load a free replacement, unlike the cards with firmware in ROM
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     翠星石 (suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com)'s status on Thursday, 20-Mar-2025 16:04:16 JST 翠星石

     in reply to

     • 翠星石
     @dushman *is installing proprietary software,