Re: We can't reject all nonfree hardware with today's technology.

[Leland Best]

Apologies for the late response.

Anyway, ...

On Sat, 2022-01-29 at 23:16 -0500, Richard Stallman wrote:
> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
> 
>   >  We can't identify a physical 
>   > object with the designs of its parts. -- RMS
> 
>   > I disagree, majority if not all hardware has some form of indexing and 
>   > identification. For example this 3DSimo pcb has silkscreen that
> identifies:
> 
> Your response may be true, but it doesn't respond to the point I made.
> I can't plug in a design and run it.  I could only do that with a
> physical instance of the design.
> 
> In today's world, for people that are not hardware hackers, plans are
> not a practical substitute for a physical computer, a LED bulb, a
> clock, a chair, or any other useful physical object.
> 

One could reasonably (_I_ think) make an almost exactly analogous argument for
software:

   In today's world, for people that are not (software) hackers, source code is
   not a practical substitute for a working (binary) operating system, a working
   (binary) Wifi driver, a working (binary) copy utility, or any other (binary)
   program.

Just to be clear, _I'm_ not trying to argue that Free Software is not important,
or that the FSF should abandon it's efforts, or anything similar.  What I'm
trying to point out is that people tend to have a certain amount of tunnel
vision when thinking/discussing the Freedom issue.  They tend to only see it as
important and/or practical in areas in which they have some expertise.

99% of the people I know have never even _seen_ source code, never mind actually
compiled and installed the resulting binaries.  And modifying it?  Or fixing
bugs?  No blinking way!  That's what programmers do.  As a result, the idea of
Free Software seems a bit abstract and it's difficult for them to grasp the
benefits.

A programmer on the other hand is much more likely to "get" Free Software.  As a
personal note, in the 1990s I was writing the code for my PhD when I
"discovered" 'gcc'.  I spent several days getting it to build on the SGI
workstations I was using and never looked back.  Later I used 'gcc' to compile
TeX without which I couldn't have afforded software to write my dissertation. 
So for _me_ Free source code became essential and, in fact, _better_ than
binaries.  For a programmer, Free source code is something you can "plug in" and
run, fix, modify, etc..  But many programmers wouldn't know (or care) which end
of a soldering iron gets hot, or what to do with it when it did.  To them,
having the design for their computer is of no practical value.

Continuing my personal story, before I got into software I was an electrical
engineer.  So, when the SCSI chip in my Amiga A3000 died, having a motherboard
layout diagram (identifying all the components on the board) allowed me to
replace the dead chip.  In a related vein, having the detailed specs. for how
interrupts were handled both by the Motorola 68030 CPU and the rest of the Amiga
hardware allowed me to submit several patches to the Amiga Linux project (long
since defunct I think).  But even in cases where direct modification/repair of
hardware may not be practical by someone like me, other aspects of Freedom _do_
require free access to designs.  For example, if we say an LED bulb is an
acceptable hardware "black box" then how can anybody know whether it might not
contain a tiny camera broadcasting video from inside one's home?  And if it did,
with sufficient Free info, some bright eyed hardware type might be able to
figure out how to disable it in a way accessible to folks like me.  So, for
hardware types hardware designs, specs., etc. are just as important as source
code is to a programmer.

And so on.

Anyway, to reiterate/conclude, it seems to me that Freedom at _all_ levels is
ultimately important because somewhere there are people that will benefit from
that Freedom which, in the end, benefits everybody.  If the FSF chooses to
restrict it's focus to Freedom for what it defines as Software, that's fine.  I
get that staffing, funding, etc. limit what the FSF can do (and IMO they do a
great job within that domain).  But Freedom at _all_ levels is still important.
I guess the question is: To what, if any, extent does it make sense to try to
bring it all under one umbrella or, if not, along what lines should the efforts
be divided?

Cheers
Leland Best
-- 
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Leland C. Best      | Creationists make it sound as though a 'theory' is
lcbpublic@gmail.com |  something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.
                    | -- Isaac Asimov
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