[Dev] Canceling of Parabola ARM

[fauno]

Luke <g4jc at openmailbox.org> writes:

> The two test boards provided were Beaglebone and Raspberry Pi. If
> someone is willing to donate a board which is capable of booting without
> blobs this project could be re-launched. I backed my work (e.g.
> mplayer-libre), prior to the git removal.
>
> My current plan is to free several packages on my personal git and wait
> until a board comes along which is cable of running a fully free kernel
> that we can make tests on. Then this could continue at a later date.
>
> If you are willing to donate the All Winner, it may be worth testing.
> Ask Emulatorman if he can share his latest PKGBUILD of linux-libre with
> you. However be aware that if it requires a blob you might be left with
> a non-usable device. Make backups of the current SDCard.
>
> I do not have the full list of blobs, Emulatorman mentioned several in
> the IRC which were required for the two previous boards to operate.

if there're arm devices that can be booted with linux-libre i don't see
why the arm port has to stop.  you won't be able to boot the current
boards fully free but at least and up until a free device comes along,
you'll be able to use only free software in them, instead of having many
non-free things mixed with the only bit of unfree software that's
necessary.

as mtjm said, this scenario already happens on x86 machines[^1] and we
keep going, and it's worst when you have an unsupported wifi card, so
you have to buy another one or install the unfree module separately.  in
these cases you at least know what's unfree on your machine.


what i'm saying is that if packages built on the pseudo-free raspberry
pi and beagle bone we already have are able to run on freer boards
later, we keep working on them.  otherwise we're losing momentum (and
we're already late to the party!)


[^1]: last time i read about raspberry pi's blob they were going to move
      it into a rom chip, bios-style.

-- 
http://fauno.endefensadelsl.org
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