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   翠星石 (suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com)'s status on Monday, 16-Feb-2026 20:07:45 JST 翠星石

   in reply to

   • Paolo Redaelli
   • Mattia Monga
   @paoloredaelli @mmonga The kernel, Linux is now in a far worse state than the end of the 90's - as it's composed of more proprietary software than ever before.
   
   An OS, or a kernel that is free, is committed to only ever distributing software that is free - even if that is inconvenient.
   
   As soon as the first proprietary program is added and not removed, more will be added, until the software is primarily composed of proprietary software (this was true of Linux in the past, due to one of the peripheral software binaries containing a proprietary copy of Linux and it's on track to becoming more than 50% proprietary software).
   
   
   Hardware microcode is a different thing to software - so that's a different question.
   
   All hardware is inherently proprietary, thus hardware freedom is currently impossible, but 100% software freedom is very possible - if it just isn't sabotaged.
   • Embed this notice
     Paolo Redaelli (paoloredaelli@mastodon.uno)'s status on Monday, 16-Feb-2026 20:07:46 JST Paolo Redaelli

     • Mattia Monga

     @Suiseiseki #proprietary #firmware is quite a big problem, I do acknowledge it.
     It seems to me that BSD camp today is more or less in the state Linux were at the end of the nineties.
     Even if you get the sources of **all** your firmwares you just move the line because you still need to free the #microcodes of modern hardware.
     It's a matter of where you drawn the line as @mmonga once told me.