Re: FSF continuously harms Free Hardware

[Richard Stallman]

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  > Well, you said that free hardware designs are necessary in a "distant
  > future", and I strongly disagree with that.

I said something that was too brief, and wasn't clear.  So you
misunderstood it.

  > > Free hardware designs are desirable, and may be necessary in a
  > > possible distant future, but not very soon.

I said it that way because I had already explained the point and
thought a brief reference to it would be clear enough in this context.
I will now restate that point in full.

    Someday we may be able to take the stand that we reject all hardware
    made from nonfree designs, and urge everyone else to do likewise.

That is not feasible today.  To be ready to reject all nonfree
hardware designs, we need to have free-design hardware for a wide
range of uses that is easy to obtain.

Imagine if we had said, in 1990, "We reject all nonfree software in
our installed system."  Having no free kernel, we would have had to
shut down our computers.  It was _too early_ then to take that stand.
We took it later, when the software situation had advanced far enough
that it was feasible.

The hardware situation today is comparable to that.  Some day, I hope,
it will be feasible to take that stand.

But we will to state the range to which the stand applies.  For
instance, I have some dimmable LED bulbs.  They have some nontrivial
circuit.  I have various DC power adapters.  They have nontrivial
circuits.  I have digital clocks.  I have a microwave oven.  I have
telephones to use with my landline.

Such products are not available with free designs, or even with
nonfree top-level schematics.  Would you suggest we all stop using
them until they do?

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)