[Dev] Misleading information in EOMA68 news

[Tiberiu-Cezar Tehnoetic]

On 16.08.2016 22:14, Paul Kocialkowski wrote:
> Le mardi 16 août 2016 à 20:34 +0200, pelzflorian (Florian Pelz) a écrit :
>> (“Respects your freedom” would be equally fuzzy if it were not certified
>> according to clear criteria.)
> 
> On that, I disagree. Freedom in technology has a very precise definition, and
> respecting that definition is very binary and straightforward. I don't see
> what's fuzzy about it.

At least freedom in software has a very precise definition. I'm not
aware of a hardware freedom definition. But by extension, considering
that hardware is designed and manufactured using a hardware description
language, one can define freedom in hardware as freedom of the hardware
description software. I believe this is the point made in this
relatively recent essay of RMS:

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-hardware-designs.html

It seems freedomdefined.org which hosts the most known and accepted
definition for freedom in culture also hosts a definition for "open
source hardware":

http://freedomdefined.org/OSHW

It's also linked from Open Design Definition at OKFN:

http://design.okfn.org/designdefinition/

I couldn't find a definition for hardware freedom at Hardware Freedom
Day: http://www.hfday.org/

> The FSF's RYF certification is instead adding layers of compromises (and also
> mixing a bunch of other aspects in the bag). So I certainly wouldn't mix
> "respects your freedom" and "the FSF's respect your freedom certification".

Yes, you're right.

I have just received the answer from RMS regarding the use of "free
software friendly":

On 16.08.2016 22:52, Richard Stallman wrote:
>> IMO, we should teach users to avoid this ambiguous term. Instead of
>> "free software friendly", they should use the term "compatible with
>> fully free operating systems" if the hardware is compatible with free
>> distros endorsed by FSF.
>
> I agree.  The FSF could post something about this.  I will suggest it
> to the campaigns people.
>
> In the long term, I hope that our endorsement, RYF, will set a
> standard and that people will come to see other terms, without clear
> and strict definitions as inadequate.

Thanks,
Tiberiu

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