[Dev] [libreplanet-discuss] Misleading information in EOMA68 news

[Ali Razeen]

Hi Tiberiu-Cezar,

I am only a libre software/hardware user and a backer of EOMA.

> On Aug 26, 2016, at 7:30 AM, Tiberiu-Cezar Tehnoetic <tct at ceata.org> wrote:
> 
> On 26.08.2016 12:46, Paul Kocialkowski wrote:
>> Le jeudi 25 août 2016 à 23:22 -0400, John Sullivan a écrit :
>>> Tiberiu-Cezar Tehnoetic <tct at ceata.org> writes:
>>> Below are more attempts of ThinkPenguin to brainwash people.
>>> 
>>> This stops now on this list. ThinkPenguin is not deliberately attempting
>>> to brainwash anyone, and we won't tolerate accusations of bad faith
>>> here.
> 
> John, have you read in detail the discussion and followed the links?
> Anyone is free to find counter-arguments to the arguments/proof I have
> provided. And it's time someone else than Christopher Waid does that on
> the libreplanet-discuss mailing list.
> 
>>> What this *should* be is a discussion among people on the same side to
>>> refine text and messaging such that it is accurate, approachable, and
>>> effective. Please make it that.
>> 
>> Thank-you for intervening here. This is what I meant this discussion to be in
>> the first place, not a targeted attack at Christopher, Luke, Thinkpenguin or
>> Rhombus Tech. I'm really sad it has turned this way and condemn those
>> accusations as well.
> 
> These accusations are my conclusions based on my several-year experience
> as business competitor of ThinkPenguin and believe me I learned the hard
> way he's doing it deliberately, me more than anyone else (except maybe
> Minifree).
> 
> Essentially, the "EOMA68 as libre hardware" debate comes down to these
> three simple questions:
> 
> Question #1:
> 
> What does "right from the beginning" mean in this paragraph:
> 
> "This project has been extremely unusual in that it has been a Libre
> Hardware and Software project right from the beginning. Many projects
> claim a degree of “open-ness”, using the word “open” in order to attract
> users and developers, but a simple in-depth investigation of such
> projects quickly reveals the claim of “open-ness” to be misleading or
> outright false." -- https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop
> 
> Shouldn't that be corrected if the PCB design sources are not free at
> this moment? It takes only 1 minute to correct it (for instance, state
> that the computer will probably become "libre hardware" at some point).
> 

As pointed out earlier by Christopher, the PCB sources only need to be released to those who have the hardware for it to be considered libre hardware. This is the same (at least in my understanding) in libre software: the whole world does not need to have the source code to a software that is under the GPL license. Strictly speaking, the users of a GPL software may request for the source code from the developer. They may wish to distribute it later and the developer has no right to stop that. But the developer of a GPL software is not under any obligation to provide the source code to someone who is *not* a user of the software.

If this is true in the libre hardware world, then at the moment, EOMA68 is libre hardware right from the beginning. If they release the hardware to their backers like myself, but do not provide the PCB design sources, *then* we can say they are not libre hardware.

Do you think my reasoning is right?

Best,
Ali