this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2024

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Nonfree software found in GNU Boot releases again, many distros affected. (savannah.gnu.org)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] TMP_NKcYUEoM7kXg4qYe 48 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Don't worry, the whole thing is that GNU boot contains proprietary firmware for testing coreboot. The only distros affected are GNU Boot and Canoe Boot. Upstream coreboot has that testing firmware there intentionally so it's silly to call it "affected".

FSF is doing great stuff for the world but I think FOSS is kinda held back by being led by nerds that are "a bit different". (edit: I mean that with respect. These nerds are surely nice people and great coders but imo not great philosophical leaders)

[+] [email protected] -57 points 1 month ago (3 children)

They're a bunch of idealists that are detached from reality. Kinda reminds me of myself back when I was still in college.

[–] [email protected] 57 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Yeah and thanks to us you get to enjoy free software, yet you insult us for how we think and try to get and keep open software open.

Up yours

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago

You are right that the tone was a little insulting.

That said, who is the “us” that you are referring to?

A lot of Open Source software is written by people that would not see the use of non-free components for testing as a problem. A lot of Open Source software is written by people that believe in the superiority of collaborative software development but do not have strong opinions on user freedom. The may ever value developer freedom in ways that is incompatible with the most extreme or idealist views of user freedom.

Are you demanding recognition to “us” for all that software?

The post you are replying to was unnecessarily combative. Your is no better and is supported by no better moral high-ground.

[–] [email protected] 43 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Look, when you're trying to get your computer working I agree. I don't mind having to use nonfree stuff if I literally cannot boot otherwise. But if we don't have strong ideological fighters pushing for things like totally free systems then we wouldn't be where we are today and we would always have to use non free stuff. So it's definitely important we have people who are more ideologically idealist.

[–] PushButton 20 points 1 month ago (2 children)

When Stallman was saying that smartphones would become a spying device, people were calling him crazy.

I am still thinking he's a bit on the crazy spectrum, but that some food for thought...

[–] Ledivin 6 points 1 month ago

Crazy doesn't necessarily mean wrong 🤷‍♂️ Stallman is undeniably crazy

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

Stallman is often batshit insane, but when it comes to tech he knows what he's saying.

I would trust a doctor when he says about something about my stomach, I wouldn't trust them about astrophysics.

I would trust Stallman about how computers can be misused and mistreated, same as Cory Doctorow. I wouldn't trust both about a small part of history, unless it was obvious or very well cited.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago

They may be idealists that don't reflect a use case I think is reasonable to expect of the average user, but I would also say that it's very important to have them there, constantly agitating for more and better. They certainly don't manage to land on achieving all their goals, but they also prevent a more compromising, "I just need to use my stuff now, not in 10 years when you figure out a FOSS implementation" stance from being used to slowly bring even more things further away from FOSS principles in the name of pragmatism.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Appreciated if someone can explain what is the problem and its context in simple terms 🙏

I understand the GNU "framework" is built on free, open source software. So I don't understand how one can "discover" that there were pieces of non-free software there... They were put there by mistake?

[–] anamethatisnt 21 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

They were put there for some testing and from their mailing list it sounds like it will be removed as it's unnecessary.

Apologies that this has caused problems for you.
This is just some old test data used to confirm that the parser in the command line utility works, and I don't think anyone thought about the redistribution legality implications of putting those images into the repo.
I agree that it's not a good situation and we should try to fix it.

There is no real reason for these binaries to be in those test fixtures — the point of the tests is just to verify parsing for vboot data structures, the actual contents of the file are not really relevant.

Julius Werner, member of the Advisory Group

https://mail.coreboot.org/hyperkitty/list/[email protected]/thread/6JI7KTJ3QVK6Q5BLNWREX2IBVZP7GCLP/

edit: "there is a general advisory committee made up of any individuals who wish to help out and discuss their thoughts with the leadership board. This is done at bi-weekly meetings, which all members of the project are invited to attend and contribute."
https://coreboot.org/leadership.html

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

Cheers! Got a bit clearer now.

[–] rtxn 15 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Leah Rowe probably hasn't stopped laughing since this was published.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago

Many distros affected by the ability to boot

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

is this releated to grub?

[+] [email protected] -7 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Falls under the heading of ask me if I give a flying fuck. Sorry, I just can't identify with Stallman's rather awkward and impractical form of puritanism.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 month ago

While I agree with your view (at least when it comes to firmware, especially given that hardware that doesn't require a firmware upload on boot generally just has the very same proprietary firmware on a built-in memory, so the only difference is that you don't get to even touch the software running on it), the point of this project is to remove non-libre components from coreboot/libreboot.

It doesn't differentiate itself from upstream in any other way, so if it fails to do the one thing it was made to do, then that's in fact a newsworthy fact.

[–] anamethatisnt 8 points 1 month ago (2 children)

In this case the binaries with the nonfree software seem be completely unnecessary, so why not keep it free?

https://mail.coreboot.org/hyperkitty/list/[email protected]/thread/6JI7KTJ3QVK6Q5BLNWREX2IBVZP7GCLP/

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (2 children)

The political downvoting in this thread is a turn off for me. However, I completely agree with your statement / question.

[–] anamethatisnt 1 points 1 month ago

Personally I've upvoted the replies as they keep a relevant and interesting discussion going.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

@LeFantome @anamethatisnt If people disagree with me and think authors shouldn't be able to specify how their work is used, I'm okay with that. We can agree to disagree.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

@anamethatisnt It's only unnecessary if you don't happen to own hardware that requires the non-free drivers.

[–] anamethatisnt 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Not in this case, the tests they're running doesn't need the vendor blobs in those testing folders.

Generally I agree with Debians changes to include nonfree firmware in the default images and making the "completely free" images the non-default version. I do think maintaining and having completely free distro versions to be a good thing though.

The whole situation is really unnecessary because none of the things that we're testing really requires those vendor blobs.
We're just testing the basic vboot and CBFS structures in those images, the file contents are not really relevant as long as they match the signatures.
So I think the easiest option here is to just remove the offending CBFS files from those images / overwrite the offending FMAP sections with zeroes.

https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/374385985

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

@anamethatisnt What are the real world implications of "non-free" software? I've never paid a cent for it, should I?

[–] anamethatisnt 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

That question is kind a rabbit hole and not one I feel confident in going down.

Free as in freedom, not as in free beer.
The real world implications of non-free software is that other's can't run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software.

I like having computing alternatives that are free from corporate control and believe that the hardliners like FSF helps us keep those alternatives alive. I realise that those alternatives are in many ways worse and that a lot of hardware today requires the vendor blobs to work. When/If corporations push their control even further I want those alternatives to be around.

And you really should pay for winrar. ;-)

[–] [email protected] -4 points 1 month ago (2 children)

@anamethatisnt Yea, so you think the authors are not entitled to specify how their software is used? This is where I have a major disconnect with Richard Stallman.

[–] anamethatisnt 2 points 1 month ago

I believe that both proprietary non-free systems and fully free systems can exist and that having licensing alternatives like GPL, LGPL and MIT gives the developer options for specifying how their software is to be used.

The movement towards using MIT or LGPL instead of the full GPL for libraries thus allowing the developers using the libraries the freedom to choose what license their software should use is one I can stand behind.

If someone builds a FLOSS turbotax competitor and don't want anyone to use their hard work and fork it into a commercial and proprietary product then I believe there should be a license for that.
If they rather earn money from it and copyrights their code instead that is also their prerogative.
The middle-ground where they create a free turbotax competitor with a license that allows others to fork it into a proprietary software should also be possible - although I personally don't see the allure.

[–] Ledivin 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

They are free to use whatever license they want, but I am similarly free to avoid using software under non-FOSS licenses.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 month ago

@Ledivin and if your wifi doesn't work as a result, I'm totally ok with that too.

[–] rottingleaf 7 points 1 month ago

It's aesthetically nice. Just when you don't make compromises, the practical cases will be few.

That's true even for using OpenBSD as a daily driver. No Stallman there (and they don't like him), but some principles have to be followed. Thus no Wine and no Linux emulation.

Would like to try using Guix for a long time some day, but it would be an interruption.