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@Suiseiseki@freesoftwareextremist.com @wolf480pl@mstdn.io Stop your word vomitFirmware is microprocessor instructions stored on socketed ROM chips - you can't electronically reprogram it, but you can just swap the chip - hence the firmnessThis hasn't been the common accepted meaning for agesIf you (or the manufacturer) can electronically change it, it's software, if you (and the manufacturer) cannot change it, it's hardware.What do we define as "electronically change it"? If you connect an extra cable to the device and use an external device to change it, is it "electronically change it" or no?

There is a spectrum between hardware and software, and this completely ignores it. RYF says FPGA bytecode is "hardware", so then is Analogue Pocket (almost completely built on FPGAs) RYF? Everything on there is "hardware", so RYF doesn't care about it, even if really, the main purpose of the device is the damn ability to change what's on the FPGA.The RYF doesn't require implementing digital handcuffs - it requires you not attack the user with proprietary software.It quite literally gives an exception to "software delivered inside auxiliary and low-level processors and FPGAs, within which software installation is not intended after the user obtains the product". The simplest way to fulfill the "software installation is not intended after the user obtains the product" is to add blockers.

When the easiest way to satisfy all of the objective qualifications for a certification is making shit worse, the certification isn't good.

And the "Cooperation with FSF and GNU public relations" section is full of shitty FSF ideological bullshit that as usual does absolutely nothing to actually help free software. You absolutely can have free software Linux without GNU or shit, but nooooooooo, you must mention GNU or the FSF will say that your hardware is shit. This is bullshit, and you know it's bullshit.It is very possible to make a modern computer that complies with RYF that has proprietary hardware, you just need to avoid garbage chipsets.Find a single SDD or HDD that has no ability to update it's firmware. I'm absolutely certain that there is none that are still manufactured.

I'm kinda tempted to get one of the only full computers that are RYF certified - those shit-ass decades old thinkpads - just to prove that the drives they're using in them are not RYF compliant because they allow firmware updates. They don't put their model numbers online, because they're just getting whatever random ones they can get cheap, and I can guarantee that their firmware can be updated.A lot of so called "open hardware" doesn't work without lots of proprietary software.OSHWA certification requires that all software for using the hardware is open source. https://certification.oshwa.org/In demonstrated practice a developer skilled enough to replace proprietary software is skilled enough to reprogram an EEPROM, thus such "modification restriction" doesn't occur in practice.Why I, as a user, should need to get new hardware if I want to start using free software with it? The cost can be zero, but only if the hardware wasn't designed for RYF to start with.The pinephone is not RYF compliant because of how the Wifi+Bluetooth chipset doesn't work without hotloaded proprietary software, that is recommended to the user, same as nonfree autofocus software and I believe there are further issues.So you'd rather have all of that stuff in EEPROMs? Making the product worse and burying any chances for simple updates to any free software rewrites of them.would pass RYF if it wasn't for how that modem software is malicious.Malicious? How?

And still, it wouldn't have passed, because even though it's stored on NAND Flash (not EEPROM) on the modem module, you can update it from the main CPU, hence failing the "within which software installation is not intended after the user obtains the product" clause.RYF doesn't do anything to restrict anyone from building hardware that runs 100% free software - it rather encourages doing so.It may, but the last fully certified computer is ~15 years old, and only became such after 9 years of the actual release of the hardware. Nobody seems to be encouraged to build computers because of RYF. It's a shitty ass program that displays how inept the FSF has been when talking about the software-hardware interface.h