@charlie_root >the kernel ships firmware so your hardware can work, this is a courtesy to the user.
Refusing the user freedom without even asking them is a courtesy to the user?

Most of the proprietary malware has been moved to "linux-firmware", which they say is "separately distributed" to Linux, but they haven't moved all of it.

I linked to the malware that hasn't been moved, but that's really for hardware you are very unlikely to have, so the stated "goal" won't even be achieved.

Even so, I tried Trisquel GNU/Linux-libre on the most proprietary of computers and it worked just fine - the only drawback was that the tyrant GPU refused to clock up past idle since nvidia.

>Not everyone wants to use old broken Thinkpads.
I've found that freedom respecting thinkpads are the best laptops you can get and lack much of the brokenesses that most laptops have.


>on a Pinephone CE which is a open hardware design with a flashed open modem (*userland only)
Can you provide a link to the hardware design?

Basic searching only turned up limited schematics, which doesn't qualify for even an "open hardware design", but at least allows for easier modification and repairs.

>with a flashed open modem
The userspace software may be free, but the main functional part runs proprietary software and is out to get you (I've looked for a non-malicious LTE cellular modem for a while and I haven't found one) - sure it's better than fully proprietary, but not much.

>We have to live with an imperfect system of hardware vendors
We only have the imperfect system is because too many used accept malware from hardware vendors and so they keep doing worse and worse things.

Things would change fast if a fair chunk of potential customers refuse to purchase hardware that doesn't respect their freedom.

>they often distribute the firmware for free
They don't distribute it free, they distribute it proprietary.
It's not even gratis, as the cost for the software is merely included in the hardware cost.

>or have open source developers sign NDA's to write drivers.
It's quite sad that "open source developers" are willing to sign a contract agreeing to betray everyone on earth to avoid hurting the feelings of suits in a certain corporation.

Ideally, after a short betrayal period, a fully free software driver would be written, but I've haven't heard of a case of that happening.


>The closed nature is a IP (intellectual property) issue, because companies have competitors that would love nothing more than to get their internals and schematics.
I'll stop you right there at trying to con me with corporate propaganda.

"intellectual property" is an oxymoron: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html

Although we're quite happy to accept a board design under a free license, we're not asking for that.

All we're asking is that the firmware for the hardware is released as free software (it's really only useful when used on the vendors hardware and almost usually useless otherwise), or for unrestricted documentation on how to use the hardware (so we can write free firmware).

Competitors can and do reverse engineer the hardware designs and make a clone of the hardware designs - but such really isn't a competitive threat unless the businesses hardware is so bad that the clone hardware works better.

A competitor having a copy of the original board designs would allow them to avoid spending time reverse engineering, but as the original company was first to market and if the company is known for producing good products at a good price, why would many people buy the clone?

>This is not malware nor an aggression.
It's often the case that proprietary software has malicious technical features like backdoors and digital handcuffs built in: https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/

Even for the unicorn piece of proprietary software that lacks malicious technical features, how the software doesn't respect your freedom is a malicious feature and is aggression.

As a result, I have concluded that all proprietary software is malware.


Also, many companies are extremely aggressive and use proprietary malware to carry out their aggression.

One example I can think of is FTDI.

FTDI chips are as proprietary as can be (although they at least publish the pin layouts), but there are still clones and some of those clones are better than the original, as the errata has been fixed (it seems FTDI can't be bothered to fix errata in future chips of the same model).

Rather than making their hardware better, FTDI aggressively slipped in a malicious feature in their proprietary malware windows driver that detected and bricked clones (allegedly they did this not once, but twice so far).


>You speak like your in a cult.
I'd just like to interject for a moment, what you're referring to as "cult" is in fact GNU/Cult, or as I have sometimes taken to calling it, GNU+Cult.

My GNU/Cult of freedom is better than your cult that is centered around bowing down to proprietary masters.