Nonfree software found in GNU Boot releases again, many distros affected.

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)

51

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

-57
- 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
  
  58
- 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.
  
  44
- 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.
  
  11

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?

21

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/coreboot@coreboot.org/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
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- Cheers! Got a bit clearer now.
  
  5

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

16

As a coreboot user, I'm laughing as well.

To me, this highlights the fallacy (and arguably hypocricy) of their thesis.

-9

Many distros affected by the ability to boot

11

is this releated to grub?

2

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.

-7

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.

33
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/coreboot@coreboot.org/thread/6JI7KTJ3QVK6Q5BLNWREX2IBVZP7GCLP/

8
- The political downvoting in this thread is a turn off for me. However, I completely agree with your statement / question.
  
  1
- @anamethatisnt It's only unnecessary if you don't happen to own hardware that requires the non-free drivers.
  
  1
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.

7