From nobody at parabola.nu Thu Sep 1 03:47:06 2016 From: nobody at parabola.nu (Parabola Website Notification) Date: Thu, 01 Sep 2016 03:47:06 -0000 Subject: [Dev] Orphan Libre package [linux-libre-grsec] marked out-of-date Message-ID: <20160901034706.31627.38096@parabola.nu> jc_gargma at iserlohn-fortress.net wants to notify you that the following packages may be out-of-date: * linux-libre-grsec 4.7.2_gnu.201608211829-1 [libre] (armv7h): https://parabolagnulinux.org/packages/libre/armv7h/linux-libre-grsec/ * linux-libre-grsec 4.7.2_gnu.201608211829-1 [libre] (i686): https://parabolagnulinux.org/packages/libre/i686/linux-libre-grsec/ * linux-libre-grsec 4.7.2_gnu.201608211829-1 [libre] (x86_64): https://parabolagnulinux.org/packages/libre/x86_64/linux-libre-grsec/ * linux-libre-grsec-docs 4.7.2_gnu.201608211829-1 [libre] (armv7h): https://parabolagnulinux.org/packages/libre/armv7h/linux-libre-grsec-docs/ * linux-libre-grsec-docs 4.7.2_gnu.201608211829-1 [libre] (i686): https://parabolagnulinux.org/packages/libre/i686/linux-libre-grsec-docs/ * linux-libre-grsec-docs 4.7.2_gnu.201608211829-1 [libre] (x86_64): https://parabolagnulinux.org/packages/libre/x86_64/linux-libre-grsec-docs/ * linux-libre-grsec-headers 4.7.2_gnu.201608211829-1 [libre] (armv7h): https://parabolagnulinux.org/packages/libre/armv7h/linux-libre-grsec-headers/ * linux-libre-grsec-headers 4.7.2_gnu.201608211829-1 [libre] (i686): https://parabolagnulinux.org/packages/libre/i686/linux-libre-grsec-headers/ * linux-libre-grsec-headers 4.7.2_gnu.201608211829-1 [libre] (x86_64): https://parabolagnulinux.org/packages/libre/x86_64/linux-libre-grsec-headers/ The user provided the following additional text: Grsecurity has released an updated patch for 4.7.2 From lukeshu at sbcglobal.net Thu Sep 8 22:59:20 2016 From: lukeshu at sbcglobal.net (Luke Shumaker) Date: Thu, 08 Sep 2016 18:59:20 -0400 Subject: [Dev] Fwd: [libreplanet-discuss] Aseprite is now proprietary software In-Reply-To: References: <87zinsvfx0.fsf@endefensadelsl.org> Message-ID: <87h99qroaf.wl-lukeshu@sbcglobal.net> On Wed, 31 Aug 2016 17:11:58 -0400, Andr? Silva wrote: > > [1 ] > [1.1 Re: [Dev] Fwd: [libreplanet-discuss] Aseprite is now proprietary software ] > [1.1.1 ] > We could continue maintaining aseprite-gpl [0] since it is the libre > fork of aseprite, what do you think guys? > > [0]:https://github.com/aseprite-gpl/aseprite +1 -- Happy hacking, ~ Luke Shumaker From nobody at parabola.nu Fri Sep 9 00:54:35 2016 From: nobody at parabola.nu (Parabola Website Notification) Date: Fri, 09 Sep 2016 00:54:35 -0000 Subject: [Dev] Orphan Nonprism package [kmail] marked out-of-date Message-ID: <20160909005435.31625.93726@parabola.nu> jc_gargma at iserlohn-fortress.net wants to notify you that the following packages may be out-of-date: The user provided the following additional text: kmail 16.08.1 is now released From emulatorman at riseup.net Fri Sep 9 21:27:18 2016 From: emulatorman at riseup.net (=?UTF-8?Q?Andr=c3=a9_Silva?=) Date: Fri, 9 Sep 2016 18:27:18 -0300 Subject: [Dev] Parabola GNU/Linux libre Romanian mirror Timisoara In-Reply-To: <14bf6a2ed9b9f8d1b5a09986b85ddc67@cs.upt.ro> References: <14bf6a2ed9b9f8d1b5a09986b85ddc67@cs.upt.ro> Message-ID: On 09/09/2016 05:47 PM, alin.anton at cs.upt.ro wrote: > Dear hackers, > > I would like to support your GNU/Linux libre distro with a > high-bandwidth local mirror in the West of Romania, in Timisoara. Cool > I am a Lecturer at the Polytechnic University of Timisoara and I teach > Programming Techniques and Algorithm Design, recommeding Parabola > GNU/Linux libre. Thanks! > SO, I've just added http://ignucius.ro a mirror on my office computer > based on http://mirror.yandex.ru/mirrors/parabola/iso/ . > > Please let me know if I can also help with the repositories. I hope you > can add this mirror to your website (parabola.nu). I can also replace > the office mirror with a local VPS in the network. Yes of course, we need mirrors with our repositories too! If you could do it, let us know! > Best wishes, > PhD.eng. Alin-Adrian Anton Happy hacking, Alin-Adrian Anton! -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 801 bytes Desc: OpenPGP digital signature URL: From emulatorman at riseup.net Sat Sep 10 00:18:09 2016 From: emulatorman at riseup.net (=?UTF-8?Q?Andr=c3=a9_Silva?=) Date: Fri, 9 Sep 2016 21:18:09 -0300 Subject: [Dev] [News] GNU and Bola comic book titled "IoT" is available in British English language! Message-ID: <766de3c9-9210-852a-ee17-0c6cf2489b3f@riseup.net> We're very happy to announce that we have the GNU and Bola comic book titled "IoT" available in British English language! Parabola is always looking for new volunteers, then if you have a understanding of written English and a good command of your native language, you can certainly engage in translation, or do proof-reading. Writing good English is not necessary! If it's your case and you would include your native language version, please don't hesitate to let us know on #parabola [0] or mailing list [1], we have the British English po file available for translation.[2] As far as you know, Parabola supports Free Culture [3], so you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of either: * The Free Art License [4] as published by Copyleft Attitude [5]; either version 1.3, or (at your option) any later version, or * The Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License [6] as published by Creative Commons [7]; either version 4.0, or (at your option) any later version The comic book emphasizes a story with our friends GNU and Bola [8] against Internet of Things (IoT) surveillance! GNU and Bola have a great plan to solve it! What are they going to do? We don't really know, let's see what they plan to do [9]... :P Happy hacking! Further details: * Comic book in British English [9] * Comic book in Brazilian Portuguese (original) [10] * .po files git project [11] * Comic book in different resolutions and source code from pom folder [12] [0]:irc://irc.freenode.net/#parabola [1]:https://lists.parabola.nu/mailman/listinfo [2]:https://git.parabola.nu/multimedia/p4pm.git/plain/comics/gnu-and-bola/iot/en_GB.po [3]:http://freedomdefined.org/Definition [4]:http://artlibre.org/licence/lal/en/ [5]:http://artlibre.org/ [6]:http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ [7]:http://creativecommons.org/ [8]:https://www.parabola.nu/news/parabola-has-a-new-mascot-called-bola/ [9]:https://wiki.parabola.nu/Comics:Parabola:GNU_and_Bola_Mascots:IoT [10]:https://wiki.parabola.nu/Comics:Parabola:GNU_and_Bola_Mascots:IoT_(Portugu%C3%AAs) [11]:https://git.parabola.nu/multimedia/p4pm.git/ [12]:https://repomirror.parabola.nu/src/others/multimedia/pom/src/img/ -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 801 bytes Desc: OpenPGP digital signature URL: From emulatorman at riseup.net Sat Sep 10 00:50:18 2016 From: emulatorman at riseup.net (=?UTF-8?Q?Andr=c3=a9_Silva?=) Date: Fri, 9 Sep 2016 21:50:18 -0300 Subject: [Dev] Fwd: [News] GNU and Bola comic book titled "IoT" is available in British English language! In-Reply-To: <766de3c9-9210-852a-ee17-0c6cf2489b3f@riseup.net> References: <766de3c9-9210-852a-ee17-0c6cf2489b3f@riseup.net> Message-ID: fyi -------- Forwarded Message -------- Subject: [News] GNU and Bola comic book titled "IoT" is available in British English language! Date: Fri, 9 Sep 2016 21:18:09 -0300 From: Andr? Silva To: Parabola Mail List We're very happy to announce that we have the GNU and Bola comic book titled "IoT" available in British English language! Parabola is always looking for new volunteers, then if you have a understanding of written English and a good command of your native language, you can certainly engage in translation, or do proof-reading. Writing good English is not necessary! If it's your case and you would include your native language version, please don't hesitate to let us know on #parabola [0] or mailing list [1], we have the British English po file available for translation.[2] As far as you know, Parabola supports Free Culture [3], so you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of either: * The Free Art License [4] as published by Copyleft Attitude [5]; either version 1.3, or (at your option) any later version, or * The Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License [6] as published by Creative Commons [7]; either version 4.0, or (at your option) any later version The comic book emphasizes a story with our friends GNU and Bola [8] against Internet of Things (IoT) surveillance! GNU and Bola have a great plan to solve it! What are they going to do? We don't really know, let's see what they plan to do [9]... :P Happy hacking! Further details: * Comic book in British English [9] * Comic book in Brazilian Portuguese (original) [10] * .po files git project [11] * Comic book in different resolutions and source code from pom folder [12] [0]:irc://irc.freenode.net/#parabola [1]:https://lists.parabola.nu/mailman/listinfo [2]:https://git.parabola.nu/multimedia/p4pm.git/plain/comics/gnu-and-bola/iot/en_GB.po [3]:http://freedomdefined.org/Definition [4]:http://artlibre.org/licence/lal/en/ [5]:http://artlibre.org/ [6]:http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ [7]:http://creativecommons.org/ [8]:https://www.parabola.nu/news/parabola-has-a-new-mascot-called-bola/ [9]:https://wiki.parabola.nu/Comics:Parabola:GNU_and_Bola_Mascots:IoT [10]:https://wiki.parabola.nu/Comics:Parabola:GNU_and_Bola_Mascots:IoT_(Portugu%C3%AAs) [11]:https://git.parabola.nu/multimedia/p4pm.git/ [12]:https://repomirror.parabola.nu/src/others/multimedia/pom/src/img/ -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 801 bytes Desc: OpenPGP digital signature URL: From nobody at parabola.nu Sat Sep 10 10:09:14 2016 From: nobody at parabola.nu (Parabola Website Notification) Date: Sat, 10 Sep 2016 10:09:14 -0000 Subject: [Dev] Orphan Pcr package [lightspark-git] marked out-of-date Message-ID: <20160910100914.31625.39646@parabola.nu> haglundgustaf at gmail.com wants to notify you that the following packages may be out-of-date: * lightspark-git 0.7.2.r461.g10b91ea-1.1 [pcr] (i686): https://parabolagnulinux.org/packages/pcr/i686/lightspark-git/ * lightspark-git 0.7.2.r461.g10b91ea-1.1 [pcr] (x86_64): https://parabolagnulinux.org/packages/pcr/x86_64/lightspark-git/ The user provided the following additional text: Some commits since March. From lkcl at lkcl.net Sat Sep 10 16:43:31 2016 From: lkcl at lkcl.net (Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton) Date: Sat, 10 Sep 2016 17:43:31 +0100 Subject: [Dev] Misleading information in EOMA68 news In-Reply-To: <1471280979.9327.12.camel@paulk.fr> References: <1471280979.9327.12.camel@paulk.fr> Message-ID: --- crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68 On Mon, Aug 15, 2016 at 6:09 PM, Paul Kocialkowski wrote: > Hi, it appears that there is some misleading information in the EOMA68 news: so - as you know i was too busy to deal with the assumptions made which indicated a lack of research as well as a lack of trust (because of the ****-ups made by purism), that in turn allowed various people to attack this 5-year-long (so far) project. AS WAS ALREADY MADE ABSOLUTELY CLEAR on the crowdfunding page, and was ALREADY COMMITTED TO WITH PUBLIC LIBRE-LICENSED RELEASES OF SCHEMATICS AND CAD DOCUMENTS DATING BACK SEVERAL YEARS, and REAFFIRMED RIGHT NOW, i have updated one of the set of (eight) PCB / CAD documents, this one is the microdesktop unit. http://hands.com/~lkcl/eoma/microdesktop AS PROMISED, there you will find FULL RESEARCH DOCUMENTS including NDA-FREE datasheets (which were already there for 2 years) AS PROMISED, there you will find FULL SCHEMATICS AND PCB DESIGN FILES (not just pdfs outputted from the programs) AS PROMISED, you will find gerber files for the PCB (which have gone for evaluation and quotation to the factory) you can probably tell i'm pretty cross at having been compared to purism, but more than that i'm really angry at not being taken at my word, and people having public discussions basically making out that i'm a liar, when there's a *clear* publicly-auditable online documentary evidence trail to the contrary. now, i'm not perfect, so i appreciate people making the effort to review what i'm doing. that's how mistakes are caught, which could jeapordise the project. but doing a review on an arbitrary list (instead of the one that's dedicated to the project) which *begins* with "we don't trust anything that's been said because of some company's failure" is pretty much bound to end up making a mess. i trust that i don't have to make announcements of the type above again: apologies also but i'll *not* be responding (except on the arm-netbook list) to questions or comments on the above. i trust that people can find the remaining documents for the other PCBs themselves, or, that if they cannot find what they need, to CONTACT ME on the appropriate mailing list, http://lists.phcomp.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/arm-netbook very stressed and overloaded, l. From tct at ceata.org Sat Sep 10 16:58:11 2016 From: tct at ceata.org (Tiberiu-Cezar Tehnoetic) Date: Sat, 10 Sep 2016 19:58:11 +0300 Subject: [Dev] Misleading information in EOMA68 news In-Reply-To: References: <1471280979.9327.12.camel@paulk.fr> Message-ID: <57D43BA3.7060007@ceata.org> Hi, On 10.09.2016 19:43, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote: > http://hands.com/~lkcl/eoma/microdesktop This link with and without trailing slash returns 403 Forbidden. Could you please check? Thanks, Tiberiu From adfeno at openmailbox.org Sat Sep 10 18:12:42 2016 From: adfeno at openmailbox.org (Adonay Felipe Nogueira) Date: Sat, 10 Sep 2016 15:12:42 -0300 Subject: [Dev] [News] GNU and Bola comic book titled "IoT" is available in British English language! In-Reply-To: <766de3c9-9210-852a-ee17-0c6cf2489b3f@riseup.net> References: <766de3c9-9210-852a-ee17-0c6cf2489b3f@riseup.net> Message-ID: <1473531162.13575.36.camel@adfeno-VPCEG17FB> I recently made a short review of an article about IoT for a college work. In the review I basically criticized the fact that most materials about IoT don't mention issues related to the absence of software freedom, and how it's important to society in general (not just technical people). It's not technical, since I'm not a technician, and I'm still doing my bachelor's degree on business administration. If someone knows a journal where I can publish this short review, I thank you all, specially if they have clear licensing policies to at least allow sharing of the articles. I support IoT things, **but** I demand software freedom for society (not just me) first, this is my *sine qua non* (condition without which there's no "deal"/support). This is probably what all free/libre software demand for anyways, I'm just telling you this in case there are newcomers here. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 213 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part URL: From contact at paulk.fr Sat Sep 10 18:56:04 2016 From: contact at paulk.fr (Paul Kocialkowski) Date: Sat, 10 Sep 2016 20:56:04 +0200 Subject: [Dev] EOMA68 and freedom in digital technology In-Reply-To: <40b8ad42c08d47c86d2f972fbde6daa9@thinkpenguin.com> References: <1472034304.1112.26.camel@paulk.fr> <2314eca63a5198f93e0b2ca1f3899201@thinkpenguin.com> <57BDF61A.80107@ceata.org> <1472115690.1110.46.camel@paulk.fr> <40b8ad42c08d47c86d2f972fbde6daa9@thinkpenguin.com> Message-ID: <1473533764.2627.65.camel@paulk.fr> Hi, I'm digging this up because Christopher raised a few points I would like to answer. Since it is no longer about the Parabola blog article, but rather about EOMA68 and freedom in digital technology in general, I changed the subject. Le jeudi 25 ao?t 2016 ? 14:24 -0400, Christopher Waid a ?crit?: > On 2016-08-25 05:01 AM, Paul Kocialkowski wrote: > > Le jeudi 25 ao?t 2016 ? 04:42 -0400, Christopher Waid a ?crit : > > > The laptops we sell currently @ ThinkPenguin are not RYF'd and? > > > shouldn't > > > be RYF'd, but we are working on something better than LibreBoot in? > > > that > > > it solves the free software problems in a more permanent long term? > > > way: > > > EOMA68. X86 is dead and we do not need LibreBoot for non-X86 systems. > > > > I'm very surprised to read this. How do we not need Libreboot in? > > general? > > > > Having a fully free bootup software distribution is IMO crucial to pave? > > the road > > for free software support. Note that U-Boot includes proprietary? > > software and > > should not be included as-is in or recommended by any FSDG-compliant? > > dsitros. > > > > Also, Libreboot is currently based on Coreboot (which, by the way,? > > supports an > > increasing number of ARM devices, with Chromebooks) but there's not? > > reason it > > can't handle U-Boot in the future too, or whatever other free bootup? > > software. > > > > So with upcoming ARM Chromebooks, the very large number of ARM devices? > > that can > > boot up with free software and other interesting platforms such as? > > POWER8 and > > POWER9, Libreboot still has a bright future ahead. > > We already have completely free versions of Uboot for various ARM and? > MIPS devices. All of our routers have shipped with the complete set of? > source code for the OS and bootloader. The devices are RYF certified and? > do not contain any proprietary bits in the version of Uboot run on our? > routers. Of course, but U-Boot is not a fully free software project and does not provide binary releases anyway. I do agree that it is extremely easy to come up with a fully free binary release of it for a number of boards. > https://www.thinkpenguin.com/gnu-linux/free-software-wireless-n-mini-vpn- > router-tpe-r1100 > > I want to make it clear that I don't dislike LibreBoot and I'm not? > saying it has no value. It's value right now to me is clear. It's 100%? > free software for what is otherwise proprietary. I value that. As we? > move away from X86 the value in it from a freedom-perspective will? > diminish as alternatives exist. In that position I would begin to think? > about alternative projects to work on if my primary focus was advancing? > software freedom. This is because you are, for some reason, associating Libreboot with x86. There is no particular reason to do this, and I'm working to add support for ARM devices in Libreboot. MIPS devices could also be integrated as well. OpenPOWER support is also planned to get integrated in Libreboot. > What I believe will make it valuable to people down the line will be? > functionality (within the free software community and maybe even? > beyond). I don't know what this functionality is right now and I simply? > know that it's got value to some use case still. If I had to take an? > educated guess I'd probably say it has functionality which is useful to? > system administrators in server environments. From what I understand of? > CoreBoot from which LibreBoot is derived that functionality was what has? > in the past spurred CoreBoot's adoption by those outside the free? > software world. I'm not sure extra functionalities are a requirement, but having something that works properly probably is. We are working hard to achieve that, on every aspect of free software support at the lower levels. However, I truly hope that we someday only have to care about adding new features, over getting the basics to work. > If servers were a high priority for us (they aren't) I'd probably be? > pushing/sponsoring LibreBoot. I was the first person to suggest? > LibreBoot add a donation option. Right now our focus is on laptops,? > desktops, and typical end-user hardware. I want to see GNU/Linux and? > free software adopted by the masses. It's largely won in the server? > arena and there is a huge market opportunity here for free software? > servers to anyone who wished to pursue it. Well, I don't like the idea to narrow our efforts to specific use cases or types of users. Different people and entities have different needs. Some do need to use servers. Frankly, I'd rather try and support every aspect of digital technology out there rather than voluntarily restrict the scope of what should be worked on. And anyway, there isn't so much stuff we actually have the ability to free, so I think this is what drives what we can actually do to the largest extent. Also, given the best-effort nature of all this, I think people tend to work on what they personally like/need, and I think this is fine. This is, of course, assuming a community approach and already existing devices. Your approach, which is about producing devices, is indeed quite different and you probably need to target an audience there. But then again, I'm happy to see that different companies are working on liberating different areas of digital technology by producing devices for that purpose. You pick what seems to make the most sense to you, others will pick something else and if enough people do that, we may just cover a large part of the spectrum! > > > The reason this issue hasn't been solved by us is because it's simply > > > not possible given Intel's hostility and refusal to cooperate. Reverse > > > engineering is a non-trivial task and the resulting code would not run > > > on modern Intel systems due to digital signatures. > > > > Of course, we all agree that x86 is a dead-end, at least in the long? > > run. There > > are still possibilities with somewhat old Intel and AMD hardware, but? > > these will > > be outdated eventually. Also, note that most of these old x86 platforms? > > are > > much, much faster than the A20. > > Of course. The solution isn't intended to outperform. It's intended to? > solve a problem. That problem is X86 doesn't work for us and it's too? > costly to have to design and manufacture our own non-x86 hardware (which? > is critical given all newer non-X86 hardware is dependent on other? > proprietary components such as 802.11ac wifi chips). My point is that not all x86 hardware is doomed. With some work, some AMD platforms could work with fully free software. Thus, I'm not saying it's a solution to the problem, I'm saying it gets rid of the problem, on those specific devices. But of course, since we're talking about old platforms, this approach is quite limited in time. So it is likely that such computers will either become too rare, obsolete in some aspects, or will simply be outperformed by newer generations of computers that can run with fully free software as well. > The solution to? > that is modularization. This has a side benefit of making it easy and? > cheap (relatively speaking, and therefore feasible) to manufacture new? > 'models' in addition to giving us inroads to obtain source code for? > higher end CPUs [moving forward]. Even ones that aren't yet on the? > market! That's a huge change to the two steps forward one step back we? > were doing before. Right now we are several years behind because of our? > dependence on X86 and companies who won't cooperate. By moving away and? > modularizing we can let companies designing CPUs cater to our demands.? > This is what you get from competition. I agree modularization is nice, but I don't think it fundamentally changes the game regarding freedom, but more of a practical, nice feature to have. For some other aspects, like environment-related ones, it is of course quite fundamental though. > > > We can do a lot more??than what is feasible with LibreBoot, but it has? > > > taken > > > years. Now that EOMA68 crowd funding campaign has succeeded though or? > > > is about > > > to succeed we can do a 100% free software system > > > > Note that the level of free software support brought by the EOMA68 is? > > not really > > something new. > > This is incorrect or a misunderstanding of the value here. Its taken? > years and a lot of reverse engineering to get the Allwinner A20? > supported. While the first computer card is in part built off the work? > of others at a component level it's not the value for which I'm? > referring that EOMA68 adds in relation to free software. The value is in? > the modular standard and what it is enabling us to do in the free? > software world. To look at the CPU and components individually is to? > misunderstand the value in this project. It was not essential that we? > utilize the Allwinner A20. It just made a lot of sense given the work? > others have already done including the work of Luke (for which we? > sponsored). The value is we get to pick and choose each part that goes? > into a system and when one company upstream doesn't cooperate we can? > look elsewhere. We don't have to spend years reverse engineering parts? > thereof when we can work in collaboration with the companies upstream? > doing the design of these CPUs/SOCs. To achieve that we need control? > over the design and manufacturing process. This is not something we had? > before. This is not something most companies have. Most companies build? > off of reference designs and the product designs are little different? > than the reference designs in many if not most cases. A tweak or two at? > best. Again, I don't see why modularity changes the game here. The problem has never really been the lack of acceptable hardware. ARM Chromebooks are such an example. There have been countless other Allwinner boards, such as the ones from Olimex, that do very well with free software. For each possible platform that is somewhat interesting to free software, there are already boards available. The way I see it, the EOMA68 is a i+1 iteration of this. Most certainly a much better one than most of the ones before, but not a game changer still. Again, just to be perfectly clear, this is not to undermine the project. All iterations that are better than the previous ones are leaps forward, and that's the way to go! > > There have been dozens of computers, some of which come with a > > free board design, using platforms that are as good for freedom,? > > especially with > > Allwinner (but there are lots of others). The linux-sunxi community has? > > been > > working hard on those for years and years, so this is nothing new or? > > specific to > > the EOMA68. > > > > Many ARM Chromebooks even go a step further, with a free software? > > embedded > > controller firmware. > > I'm in many cases referring to laptop designs. This isn't totally? > correct though particularly as it relates to laptops. All of the ARM? > Chromebooks have fundamental problems in one way or the other. There are? > no free software friendly 802.11ac wifi chips and these wifi chips are? > integrated on every single modern Chromebook that is readily available? > [last I checked]. You can't easily replace these chips like you can with? > X86. This is correct, but is also a detail because it has never really been a problem. Sticking-in an ath9k_htc dongle solves the issue with nearly zero associated drawbacks (and we can thank you for that).? > To solve this problem and many others in the process is to gain? > control over the overall design and what you can utilize as your? > building blocks. Of course, but anyone designing a board can do that. This is what was done with EOMA68, that extra step was taken. Modularity is only a flexible, practically convenient way to achieve that, but the problem has never been there. > With the laptop housing that is part of this crowd? > funding campaign you'll be able to get an Allwinner dual-core A20 on the? > Libre Tea Computer Card today and upgrade to a quad-core CPU tomorrow.? > It won't cost $500 either. It'll be under $100. To contrast, I personally fully support this approach (especially from the environmental perspective). I'm just saying, it's not a game changer on the freedom perspective. > > > (that is LibreBoot doesn't magically make a computer 100% free, there? > > > are > > > other problematic components). > > > > Of course, but nobody claimed that it does. It is only a very? > > significant piece > > in the software freedom puzzle. > > It's one of many pieces. It's not quite as significant as people think.? > If it were gone it wouldn't really make any difference. Note that by Libreboot, I mean "fully free bootup software" in general, regardless of the boards that are currently supported. This is what Libreboot is and targets, and it'll grow to cover as many of the boards it can support as possible. So what I meant is that fully free bootup software is a significant piece in the software freedom puzzle. Perhaps the most crucial one. > There are many components for which we are dependent and there are no? > alternative options. Wifi firmwares are a great example. We have only? > one driver and chip for modern 802.11n that we can utilize (AR9271) and? > nothing for 802.11ac (in any format, PCIE/M.2/USB). It won't be the case? > that we can get AR9271 adapters manufactured forever and at some point? > it will become critical that we work on obtaining sources [another? > project we're working on]. I fully agree. Technology moving so fast really doesn't help either. I'm truly grateful that people like you are working hard to keep up the pace and make sure free software remains relevant and freedom is still a possibility without living ten years in the past. > Wifi cards are fundamental to modern computers. You can still get away? > without 3D acceleration, but good luck with a system that doesn't have? > internet connectivity. Agreed, without a doubt. > There are zero good options for graphics right now too. Graphics are not? > quite critical because we can ship without it for the moment and the? > user experience is still "good enough", Well, it would be unfair to say that the situation is that bad. Drivers such as nouveau support cards (with free firmwares in many cases, by the way) that are not tied to any specific architecture (not only x86 uses PCI) and there are efforts to support GPUs embedded in ARM SoCs, such as Freedreno and Etnaviv (and nouveau, too). I think this is all valuable and shows that we're going somewhere. Maybe not as fast as we'd all like, but the amount of work is huge. > LibreBoot is a duplication of effort as far as critical components are? > concerned and we should try to avoid duplication of efforts given the? > limited resources available. This sounds particularly wrong to me. You're assuming a specific structure here, very much company-like, where a group of people get to decide of the directions for the group and others follow. This is not how our community works. Our community is best-effort based, so different people (or different companies) will work on different things as they please. I find it quite strange to make claims that suggest we should all follow one specific direction. People just do what they want to do. This is the mostly natural things for way to work in our community, and I have no doubt that they will keep working this way for a long time. > > > We've got the source code for LCD/Keyboard controller firmware, > > > > Regarding LCD: are you talking about a MIPI interface done in software? > > with a > > MCU? Please feel free to share details about this LCD controller? > > firmware, I'd > > be very interested to learn more about it, it sounds unusual! > > I know a little bit about it, but not enough to give you details. The? > details are readily available though. Okay, I'd be interested in those details out of curiosity, if you'd like to point me to them (I can take no for an answer, this is asking you to do some extra research work, that you can certainly do much more efficiently than me). > > > bootloaders, CPU micro code > > > > Huh? Again, please share details about the CPU microcodes. I am not? > > aware of any > > ARMv7 implementation using a microcode at all, nor of any that was? > > liberated. > > Overgeneralized. As far as the A20 goes you are correct. I can confirm? > that there is no micro code in this particular CPU. That makes sense. > I'll throw out some other words that may make more sense here: > > SPL uboot in mainline 2015-10- ddr3 timeings initialization and pll? > clocks. Yup, the community sure did a great work there. RAM init is always the trickiest part of bootup and in that case, Allwinner only barely helped (or when they did, most of it had already been figured out IIRC). > > > and similar for the EOMA68 laptop housing and Libre Tea Computer Card.? > > > That's > > > huge. And there are more significant developments coming including the? > > > release > > > of schematics and higher end CPUs. > > > > I fully agree that this is great and I support your project. However,? > > keep in > > mind that this is nothing new or groundbreaking (not to undermine the? > > project > > and the efforts associated with it). > > I disagree. There is simply nothing you can compare this project to. We? > are achieving results that can't be demonstrated via any other means. If? > we could get here some other way at a lower cost with the same long term? > impact I would have gone that route. See what Olimex has been doing for years then. They're also coming up with a laptop design. I agree that you went steps further than most before, but this is incremental improvement, not something truly new and groundbreaking compared to what existed before. > The issue is your looking at one thing. A few specs. It's not the specs? > that matter. It's the standard, it's the modularization, it's the? > response and cooperation we are getting already as a result of our? > actions here, etc. Intel and AMD are not going to cooperate and building? > off of other companies products (higher up the chain) is not a reliable? > long term solution. Again, I don't see how modularization changes anything here. Hardware availability has never been the problem. For laptops, we only had minor annoyances,?like Wi-Fi chips that require proprietary firmwares, with the most advanced designs for freedom like ARM Chromebooks. So you took a step forward there. It's not a revolution, it's a step forward: solving the (minor) Wi-Fi issue. For single-board computers, you didn't bring any specific improvement over Olimex's Allwinner boards. Again, I don't want to sound like your project doesn't matter to me, because it really does. Only that it's an improved iteration over what exists rather than whole new ground. And that's totally fine by the way, it is a very sane way to go. It also shows that you're not the only person on earth caring about these issues and producing hardware that solves an increasing number of them (even though I suspect some other players produce devices with such results without really aiming at that goal). So overall, thanks for your work :) -- Paul Kocialkowski, developer of low-level free software for embedded devices Website: https://www.paulk.fr/ Coding blog: https://code.paulk.fr/ Git repositories: https://git.paulk.fr/ https://git.code.paulk.fr/ -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 801 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part URL: From lkcl at lkcl.net Sat Sep 10 19:38:34 2016 From: lkcl at lkcl.net (Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton) Date: Sat, 10 Sep 2016 20:38:34 +0100 Subject: [Dev] [libreplanet-discuss] EOMA68 and freedom in digital technology Message-ID: sorry, i'm receiving this as digest mode, from libreplanet, and haven't been watching it (or the other lists cc'd). i'll try to recreate the cc set of lists, apologies in advance if this doesn't get through to all of them. also, please be aware that i'm leaving for HK in about 10 hours time and it's an extremely long flight, so i'll be offline for at least the next 2 days. also i'm adding arm-netbook (needs subscription) because i'd like to make people on that list aware of this discussion, which appears to have been ongoing for some time. >> I disagree. There is simply nothing you can compare this project to. We >> are achieving results that can't be demonstrated via any other means. If >> we could get here some other way at a lower cost with the same long term >> impact I would have gone that route. > > See what Olimex has been doing for years then. you're aware that olimex operates as a criminal cartel, from shipping GPL-violating A10 bootloaders and kernels provided by Allwinner, back around 2011/2012? you're also aware that with the sole exception of the olimex laptop's PCBs the only thing that they provide is auto-generated PDFs *from* the schematics source code... not the actual schematics and certainly not the PCB design files? > They're also coming up with a laptop design. ... where they've taken off-the-shelf china-sourced (proprietary) casework: i started the GPLv3+ casework project for the EOMA68 15.6in laptop housing *two years* ago as a completely and fully libre project. you can verify that by looking at the git commit logs. tsvetan has caused a hell of a lot of trouble for the EOMA68 project and has sponged off of the resources of a *lot* of people. he truly doesn't understand the word "libre". at all. also, the A64's processor - which tsvetan is using for the olimex laptop - requires a proprietary early-bootloader. in fact, the first A64 SDK that came out was an absolute mess, comprising several GPL violations in both the early-bootloader, the u-boot source *and* the linux kernel. the SDK was even exclusively distributed over a chinese illegal filesharing network (this is an "official" released SDK from allwinner!) over a considerable period of time, pine64 and the sunxi community worked to eliminate as many of those GPL violations as they could, but Allwinner insisted on keeping the early-bootloader proprietary. so at present the A64 is classified as a "non-libre" processor. that it's the basis of the olimex laptop tells you everything you need to know. to tsevetan's credit he is doing his best as he understands it, but there's nobody taking him to task on the things that matter to software freedom. he's happy to take your money even if it means selling you product that requires proprietary software. he's *less* happy to then *invest* that money into helping solve the issues which create all the problems that go *with* proprietary software. now, whilst tsevtan is making money selling you hardware that requires non-free components to operate basic functions, i've put my foot down and said NO, i will NOT sell GPL-violating product. i don't care if that means it's harder to deliver ethical products, i'll deal with that on an ongoing basis, but here's the thing: it means i've established a reputation for setting some ethical rules *AND STUCK TO THEM*. > I agree that you went steps further than most before, but this is > incremental improvement, not something truly new and groundbreaking compared to > what existed before. hmmm, an interesting perspective, which i feel may be based on not being aware of the sheer overwhelming number of issues being tackled (all at once). yes it's "incremental improvement" but it's a MASSIVE stack of MULTIPLE "incremental improvements", all done at once. *nobody* has tried to do that before. not Dell, not Olimex, not IBM - *nobody*. for example you compare the EOMA68 Housing to the olimex laptop. the olimex laptop's casework is proprietary (the EOMA68 Housing's is GPLv3+ libre-licensed). so automatically you can see that it's nowhere near being a legitimate comparison. >> The issue is your looking at one thing. A few specs. It's not the specs? >> that matter. It's the standard, it's the modularization, it's the? >> response and cooperation we are getting already as a result of our? >> actions here, etc. Intel and AMD are not going to cooperate and building? >> off of other companies products (higher up the chain) is not a reliable? >> long term solution. > > Again, I don't see how modularization changes anything here. you can't focus on just the one aspect and conclude that "it's not significant". bear in mind that this has been a 5 year project, where i've had 15 years of working near-exclusively with software libre, looking at the endemic and systemic problems and coming up with a *long-term* strategy to tackle *all* of the issues associated with the consequences of proprietary computing... *all at once*. modularisation (and having open standards despite what the wikipedia-page-that's-already-scheduled-for-deletion would have you believe) is one - *one* - critical - *critical* part of that strategy. > Hardware availability has never been the problem. libre hardware availability has *always* been a problem. entropy guarantees that it always will. you actually have to make a concerted continuous effort to push back against the corner-cost-cutting of the mass-volume industry. > For laptops, we only had minor > annoyances,?like Wi-Fi chips that require proprietary firmwares, proprietary firmware for WIFI is a bit more than a "minor" annoyance, paul! > with the most > advanced designs for freedom like ARM Chromebooks. So you took a step forward > there. It's not a revolution, it's a step forward: solving the (minor) Wi-Fi > issue. For single-board computers, you didn't bring any specific improvement > over Olimex's Allwinner boards. at least we waited until we could get the entire set of sources for as much of the hardware as we could get (the only exception being that we haven't got a libre MALI driver yet, but there's even a plan to deal with that). no, paul, what you're missing here is that there's an *active committment* to tackling the pain, cost burden and inconvenience that proprietary software (and hardware) causes. everybody else - Dell, IBM, HP, Asus, Olimex, they're all *sleep-walking* - making MONEY off of you (and everyone else) because you really don't know any better, you think it's *okay* to throw away a perfectly good printer because its proprietary driver is no longer "compatible" with modern OSes. there's no *active* committment from any of these companies to *actually* try and solve the problems.... because they don't understand that there *is* even a problem! > Again, I don't want to sound like your project doesn't matter to me, because it > really does. Only that it's an improved iteration over what exists rather than > whole new ground. And that's totally fine by the way, it is a very sane way to > go. It also shows that you're not the only person on earth caring about these > issues and producing hardware that solves an increasing number of them (even > though I suspect some other players produce devices with such results without > really aiming at that goal). exactly. there's no coordinated committment. they sell you product because you buy it... because you don't have any other choices, so you don't ask, so you keep buying more product, which gives them money to keep on doing what they're doing.... .... it's a vicious self-sustaining cycle that has to be broken by an *active* committment. ok i leave it at that. l. From lovell.joshyyy at gmail.com Sat Sep 10 20:07:24 2016 From: lovell.joshyyy at gmail.com (Josh Branning) Date: Sat, 10 Sep 2016 21:07:24 +0100 Subject: [Dev] [libreplanet-discuss] EOMA68 and freedom in digital technology In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <57D467FC.7070800@gmail.com> On 10/09/16 20:38, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote: >> See what Olimex has been doing for years then. > > you're aware that olimex operates as a criminal cartel, from shipping > GPL-violating A10 bootloaders and kernels provided by Allwinner, back > around 2011/2012? you're also aware that with the sole exception of > the olimex laptop's PCBs the only thing that they provide is > auto-generated PDFs *from* the schematics source code... not the > actual schematics and certainly not the PCB design files? I think this is a little unfair to Olimex and is at least partially untrue. For instance, schematics and pcb files CAN be found, for most of their boards. [1] Unlike your boards, which give a 404 forbidden message when trying to access the server. [2] Hopefully this is something you can correct. Though I can see that the advantage over the Olimex boards is that you ship with a libre operating system from the start. In regards to the A64 (used in the Olimex laptop), /mainline/ u-boot, from the sunxi.org wiki [3]: ' Basic support for the A64 SoC has been been merged into 2016.05-rc1. This covers UART, MMC and required GPIOs and clocks, but no Ethernet or USB yet. Also as there is no information on the DRAM controller so far, the SPL support is not enabled, so boot0 is required at the moment to get U-Boot loaded. Also, I think that the Olimex laptop has not yet been released, so that gives developers time to build more support, before they start selling. [1] https://github.com/OLIMEX/OLINUXINO/tree/master/HARDWARE/A20-OLinuXino-LIME [2] http://hands.com/~lkcl/eoma/microdesktop [3] http://linux-sunxi.org/A64 From ingegnue at riseup.net Sat Sep 10 20:34:50 2016 From: ingegnue at riseup.net (IngeGNUe) Date: Sat, 10 Sep 2016 16:34:50 -0400 Subject: [Dev] [libreplanet-discuss] EOMA68 and freedom in digital technology In-Reply-To: <57D467FC.7070800@gmail.com> References: <57D467FC.7070800@gmail.com> Message-ID: On 09/10/2016 04:07 PM, Josh Branning wrote: > On 10/09/16 20:38, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote: > Unlike your boards, which give a 404 forbidden message when trying to > access the server. [2] Hopefully this is something you can correct. > _______________________________________________ > Dev mailing list > Dev at lists.parabola.nu > https://lists.parabola.nu/mailman/listinfo/dev 403 error is "forbidden", 404 is "not found" I poked around the eoma parent directory and noticed that the same error happened on some other files. I'm not a web person but as the error states: "You don't have permission to access /~lkcl/eoma/microdesktop on this server. Server unable to read htaccess file, denying access to be safe" it's probably something to do with the .htaccess file on his webserver. As he mentioned he's going to be offline for a couple days so just give him time. From lkcl at lkcl.net Sat Sep 10 21:06:18 2016 From: lkcl at lkcl.net (Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton) Date: Sat, 10 Sep 2016 22:06:18 +0100 Subject: [Dev] [Arm-netbook] [libreplanet-discuss] EOMA68 and freedom in digital technology In-Reply-To: References: <57D467FC.7070800@gmail.com> Message-ID: --- crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68 On Sat, Sep 10, 2016 at 9:34 PM, IngeGNUe wrote: > 403 error is "forbidden", 404 is "not found" chmod ugo+rx ~/public_html/eoma/microdesktop, i'll add that to the Makefile so it doesn't happen again. sorted, thanks for alerting me. still here for the next 2-3 hours. l. From ingegnue at riseup.net Sat Sep 10 21:15:17 2016 From: ingegnue at riseup.net (IngeGNUe) Date: Sat, 10 Sep 2016 17:15:17 -0400 Subject: [Dev] [Arm-netbook] [libreplanet-discuss] EOMA68 and freedom in digital technology In-Reply-To: References: <57D467FC.7070800@gmail.com> Message-ID: <8d457921-be5f-038f-ea90-73ac614eaa2e@riseup.net> On 09/10/2016 05:06 PM, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote: > --- > crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68 > > > On Sat, Sep 10, 2016 at 9:34 PM, IngeGNUe wrote: > >> 403 error is "forbidden", 404 is "not found" > > chmod ugo+rx ~/public_html/eoma/microdesktop, i'll add that to the > Makefile so it doesn't happen again. sorted, thanks for alerting me. > still here for the next 2-3 hours. > > l. > > _______________________________________________ > arm-netbook mailing list arm-netbook at lists.phcomp.co.uk > http://lists.phcomp.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/arm-netbook > Send large attachments to arm-netbook at files.phcomp.co.uk > Thank you Luke! And my deepest thanks for your work and evident commitment to push for full freedom in computing. I am sorry that you were regarded with suspicion for the actions of the purism guy. I will add this link to my blog, and look forward to purusing the files for edification! IngeGNUe From ingegnue at riseup.net Sat Sep 10 23:50:54 2016 From: ingegnue at riseup.net (IngeGNUe) Date: Sat, 10 Sep 2016 19:50:54 -0400 Subject: [Dev] [News] GNU and Bola comic book titled "IoT" is available in British English language! In-Reply-To: <766de3c9-9210-852a-ee17-0c6cf2489b3f@riseup.net> References: <766de3c9-9210-852a-ee17-0c6cf2489b3f@riseup.net> Message-ID: <4f8e5eab-eb15-a70a-56df-f018844312a0@riseup.net> On 09/09/2016 08:18 PM, Andr? Silva wrote: > We're very happy to announce that we have the GNU and Bola comic book > titled "IoT" available in British English language! > > Parabola is always looking for new volunteers, then if you have a > understanding of written English and a good command of your native > language, you can certainly engage in translation, or do proof-reading. > Writing good English is not necessary! Awesome, I have finished a Spanish translation. I have done a little bit of work on git through Gitlab, but this is my first collaboration and I'm having trouble figuring out how to push the changes back to the master I cloned from your site. I get this error: $ git push origin master XML error: undefined entity error: no DAV locking support on https://git.parabola.nu/multimedia/p4pm.git/ fatal: git-http-push failed error: failed to push some refs to 'https://git.parabola.nu/multimedia/p4pm.git' I will try to figure it out :) But if anyone on Assist has suggestions let me know... From emulatorman at riseup.net Sun Sep 11 04:38:21 2016 From: emulatorman at riseup.net (=?UTF-8?Q?Andr=c3=a9_Silva?=) Date: Sun, 11 Sep 2016 01:38:21 -0300 Subject: [Dev] [News] GNU and Bola comic book titled "IoT" is available in British English language! In-Reply-To: <4f8e5eab-eb15-a70a-56df-f018844312a0@riseup.net> References: <766de3c9-9210-852a-ee17-0c6cf2489b3f@riseup.net> <4f8e5eab-eb15-a70a-56df-f018844312a0@riseup.net> Message-ID: On 09/10/2016 08:50 PM, IngeGNUe wrote: > > On 09/09/2016 08:18 PM, Andr? Silva wrote: >> We're very happy to announce that we have the GNU and Bola comic book >> titled "IoT" available in British English language! >> >> Parabola is always looking for new volunteers, then if you have a >> understanding of written English and a good command of your native >> language, you can certainly engage in translation, or do proof-reading. >> Writing good English is not necessary! > > Awesome, I have finished a Spanish translation. Cool, thanks > I have done a little bit of work on git through Gitlab, but this is my > first collaboration and I'm having trouble figuring out how to push the > changes back to the master I cloned from your site. I get this error: > > $ git push origin master > XML error: undefined entity > error: no DAV locking support on > https://git.parabola.nu/multimedia/p4pm.git/ > fatal: git-http-push failed > error: failed to push some refs to > 'https://git.parabola.nu/multimedia/p4pm.git' > > I will try to figure it out :) But if anyone on Assist has suggestions > let me know... Did you clone it typing -> git clone ssh://git at git.parabola.nu/~git/multimedia/p4pm.git ? Check your config file inside .git folder to see if you have set it as "url = ssh://git at git.parabola.nu/~git/multimedia/p4pm.git" -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 801 bytes Desc: OpenPGP digital signature URL: From commonssibi at gmail.com Sun Sep 11 05:08:47 2016 From: commonssibi at gmail.com (Sibi Kanagaraj) Date: Sun, 11 Sep 2016 10:38:47 +0530 Subject: [Dev] [News] GNU and Bola comic book titled "IoT" is available in British English language! In-Reply-To: <1473531162.13575.36.camel@adfeno-VPCEG17FB> References: <766de3c9-9210-852a-ee17-0c6cf2489b3f@riseup.net> <1473531162.13575.36.camel@adfeno-VPCEG17FB> Message-ID: Could you please provide the article , presentation which you made. //> I recently made a short review of an article about IoT for a college > work. // -Sibi -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From contact at paulk.fr Sun Sep 11 13:04:11 2016 From: contact at paulk.fr (Paul Kocialkowski) Date: Sun, 11 Sep 2016 15:04:11 +0200 Subject: [Dev] [Arm-netbook] [libreplanet-discuss] EOMA68 and freedom in digital technology In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <1473599051.1220.43.camel@paulk.fr> Hi, Le samedi 10 septembre 2016 ? 20:38 +0100, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton a ?crit?: > > > I disagree. There is simply nothing you can compare this project to. We > > > are achieving results that can't be demonstrated via any other means. If > > > we could get here some other way at a lower cost with the same long term > > > impact I would have gone that route. > > > > See what Olimex has been doing for years then. > > ?you're aware that olimex operates as a criminal cartel, This is a very strong accusation and I definitely do not share that perspective, at all. > from shipping > GPL-violating A10 bootloaders and kernels provided by Allwinner, back > around 2011/2012? Olimex has always been about producing community-friendly boards, not about the software. Nevertheless, Olimex has been involved with the linux-sunxi community from the early days and has always been very supportive, by providing developers with hardware to work on, taking part in the community, etc. What software they ship, or used to ship by default is IMHO a bit irrelevant. They shipped whatever Allwinner provided but always supported community free software effort. Also, when they started with Allwinner, mainline software wasn't an option. > ???you're also aware that with the sole exception of > the olimex laptop's PCBs the only thing that they provide is > auto-generated PDFs *from* the schematics source code... not the > actual schematics and certainly not the PCB design files? Huh? This is factually not correct. Olimex has released the PCB source designs of a number of Allwinner boards. That's what those .brd and .sch files are at: https://github.com/OLIMEX/OLINUXINO/tree/master/HARDWARE/ Better yet, the latest one (A64) was designed with KiCad, so those design sources can even be handled with free software! This is an unprecedented achievement that even the EOMA68 project has not reached (yet). Get?https://github.com/OLIMEX/OLINUXINO/tree/master/HARDWARE/A64-OLinuXino/A64-O linuXino_Rev_A?and open it up with KiCad if you wish to see for yourself! > > They're also coming up with a laptop design. > > ... where they've taken off-the-shelf china-sourced (proprietary) > casework: i started the GPLv3+ casework project for the EOMA68 15.6in > laptop housing *two years* ago as a completely and fully libre > project.??you can verify that by looking at the git commit logs. Of course, I do agree that free mechanical designs are important and a great thing to have, so I'm very happy that the EOMA laptop housing design is free. But my focus here was about digital technology, not mechanical parts. This is out of that scope. > tsvetan has caused a hell of a lot of trouble for the EOMA68 project > and has sponged off of the resources of a *lot* of people.??he truly > doesn't understand the word "libre".??at all. I don't share that perspective. I think his contribution to freedom in digital technology has been solid and significant. The devices he's producing show as much. > also, the A64's processor - which tsvetan is using for the olimex > laptop - requires a proprietary early-bootloader.??in fact, the first > A64 SDK that came out was an absolute mess, comprising several GPL > violations in both the early-bootloader, the u-boot source *and* the > linux kernel.??the SDK was even exclusively distributed over a chinese > illegal filesharing network (this is an "official" released SDK from > allwinner!) Of course, we all know that, but that's how you move forward! We can't just wait for the situation to be magically resolved before considering producing hardware with it, and staying away from it with a teen-feet-pole before. Simply because no change will ensue of that. Olimex has the ability to create boards early-on, that will encourage the community to work on this chip, and also create leverage with Allwinner. So it's really not about what the situation is right now, but about what it can possibly become. Allwinner chips have *always* been a mess to deal with at first, but efforts from companies like Olimex and the community made it possible to have the kind of support we know today for chips like the A20. Also bear in mind that you were able to get the EOMA68 together, with that level of free software support, in part thanks to people like Tsvetan who put together (free hardware) boards for the community to work on those chips and supported their efforts early on, when the situation is indeed a mess. > over a considerable period of time, pine64 and the sunxi community > worked to eliminate as many of those GPL violations as they could, but > Allwinner insisted on keeping the early-bootloader proprietary. > > so at present the A64 is classified as a "non-libre" processor.??that > it's the basis of the olimex laptop tells you everything you need to > know. Again, you're looking at the situation right now, which indeed matches what you describe. However, I think Olimex sees a lot of potential in A64 and so do I. Only time will tell whether it was a dead-end or not. > now, whilst tsevtan is making money selling you hardware that requires > non-free components to operate basic functions, i've put my foot down > and said NO, i will NOT sell GPL-violating product.??i don't care if > that means it's harder to deliver ethical products, i'll deal with > that on an ongoing basis, but here's the thing: it means i've > established a reputation for setting some ethical rules *AND STUCK TO > THEM*. Frankly, I don't care that a device doesn't work with free software right now if it has potential to be liberated eventually and if producing that device can create the leverage to drive exactly that effort. This is what has always happened with Allwinner chips. But of course, Olimex and you are not in the same position. They can afford to produce boards with chips that still have very early free software support. On the other hand, you need something that has good free software support. One comes after the other. I'm really surprised that you don't see things this way and attack Olimex for what level of support their latest products have *right now*. > > I agree that you went steps further than most before, but this is > > incremental improvement, not something truly new and groundbreaking compared > > to > > what existed before. > > ?hmmm, an interesting perspective, which i feel may be based on not > being aware of the sheer overwhelming number of issues being tackled > (all at once). > > ?yes it's "incremental improvement" but it's a MASSIVE stack of > MULTIPLE "incremental improvements", all done at once. From what I can see, the actual improvements (again, from the digital technology side of things, so I'm not including the mechanical design) come down to not including a Wi-Fi chip that requires proprietary software in a laptop design, which is what had been lacking from the ARM Chromebooks. If you see anything else, please state it clearly. There are also rare occurences in your design, meaning that only few products before (such as the ARM Chromebooks or the Novena) had reached that level of support, such as: using a SoC that has few freedom flaws (GPU), having a free software keyboard controller. We could also add free hardware design there (but I'm still a bit confused about what the situation actually is and didn't take the time to look it up properly). If you feel like I'm missing something substantial, please let me know. > ?*nobody* has tried to do that before.??not Dell, not Olimex, not IBM > - *nobody*. > > ?for example you compare the EOMA68 Housing to the olimex laptop.??the > olimex laptop's casework is proprietary (the EOMA68 Housing's is > GPLv3+ libre-licensed).??so automatically you can see that it's > nowhere near being a legitimate comparison. Again, my point is about digital technology here, not mechanical parts. > > > The issue is your looking at one thing. A few specs. It's not the specs? > > > that matter. It's the standard, it's the modularization, it's the? > > > response and cooperation we are getting already as a result of our? > > > actions here, etc. Intel and AMD are not going to cooperate and building? > > > off of other companies products (higher up the chain) is not a reliable? > > > long term solution. > > > > Again, I don't see how modularization changes anything here. > > ?you can't focus on just the one aspect and conclude that "it's not > significant".??bear in mind that this has been a 5 year project, where > i've had 15 years of working near-exclusively with software libre, > looking at the endemic and systemic problems and coming up with a > *long-term* strategy to tackle *all* of the issues associated with the > consequences of proprietary computing... *all at once*. > > ?modularisation (and having open standards despite what the > wikipedia-page-that's-already-scheduled-for-deletion would have you > believe) is one - *one* - critical - *critical* part of that strategy. Again, everything you can do with modularization you could do by producing new versions of boards. It solves the environmental problem and is convenient to users, but has little to do with freedom in digital technology. If you have actual specific point to counter those points (other than vague statements like "part of a strategy"), I'd be happy to react to them. > > Hardware availability has never been the problem. > > ?libre hardware availability has *always* been a problem.??entropy > guarantees that it always will.??you actually have to make a concerted > continuous effort to push back against the corner-cost-cutting of the > mass-volume industry. So if we're talking about free hardware projects, then I'll agree that the situation hasn't been that great. As far as I know, only Olimex, Novena and a few others have been producing free hardware computers that work well with free software. But again, I'm still confused about the hardware freedom situation of your device. The most meaningful part is, of course, the EOMA68 board with the A20, not the carriers (even though having them as free hardware is very nice). On the other hand, the availability of boards that have components that work well with free software have never been a problem, there's not discussion to have here. > > For laptops, we only had minor > > annoyances,?like Wi-Fi chips that require proprietary firmwares, > > ?proprietary firmware for WIFI is a bit more than a "minor" annoyance, paul! That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that there are easy and nearly painless ways to solve these problems, by using external ath9k_htc USB dongles. This fact (and this fact only) reduces the presence of a Wi-Fi peripheral that requires a non-free firmware to a minor annoyance. > (the only exception being that > we haven't got a libre MALI driver yet, but there's even a plan to > deal with that). Glad to hear it. > ?no, paul, what you're missing here is that there's an *active > committment* to tackling the pain, cost burden and inconvenience that > proprietary software (and hardware) causes. Well, I have been talking about the freedom situation in digital technology all along, not commitment. I do agree that commitment such as the one displayed with your project is a rare thing. And that is indeed groundbreaking (even though projects like the Novena were here before), because that kind of intent is clearly lacking from e.g. companies producing Chromebooks, so it rather feels like we got lucky (or that people inside these companies care a lot, but it doesn't reflect in the company's PR). Commitment is important for the long run, so I'm really glad you're around. We can't just rely on sheer luck to get devices that do well with free software from mainstream manufacturers, even though we've had good luck a great number of times already (and bad luck an astonishingly greater number of times, too). > ?there's no *active* committment from any of these companies to > *actually* try and solve the problems.... because they don't > understand that there *is* even a problem! I wouldn't include Olimex in that list, but I share your views on that. > ?.... it's a vicious self-sustaining cycle that has to be broken by an > *active* committment. Definitely, that's a (if not the only) reliable (but harder and perhaps more dangerous) way to achieve progress for freedom in digital technology. Going with luck has worked well in some areas (again, ARM Chromebooks), but we knows when our luck will turn. Even though this conversation may have taken a harsh tone at times and places, I do believe we share the same views and only disagree on details (which fill up most of our discussions here). I hope this is clear and this discussion doesn't come across as a strong attack against what you're doing! Cheers, -- Paul Kocialkowski, developer of low-level free software for embedded devices Website: https://www.paulk.fr/ Coding blog: https://code.paulk.fr/ Git repositories: https://git.paulk.fr/ https://git.code.paulk.fr/ -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 801 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part URL: From commonssibi at gmail.com Sun Sep 11 15:15:46 2016 From: commonssibi at gmail.com (Sibi Kanagaraj) Date: Sun, 11 Sep 2016 20:45:46 +0530 Subject: [Dev] [News] GNU and Bola comic book titled "IoT" is available in British English language! In-Reply-To: <1473593949.19103.8.camel@adfeno-VPCEG17FB> References: <766de3c9-9210-852a-ee17-0c6cf2489b3f@riseup.net> <1473531162.13575.36.camel@adfeno-VPCEG17FB> <1473593949.19103.8.camel@adfeno-VPCEG17FB> Message-ID: > > Is it OK for you to read Brazilian Portuguese? Or do you want me to > translate it? > > English Version would help . -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From emulatorman at riseup.net Sun Sep 11 15:27:29 2016 From: emulatorman at riseup.net (=?UTF-8?Q?Andr=c3=a9_Silva?=) Date: Sun, 11 Sep 2016 12:27:29 -0300 Subject: [Dev] [News] GNU and Bola comic book titled "IoT" is available in British English language! In-Reply-To: References: <766de3c9-9210-852a-ee17-0c6cf2489b3f@riseup.net> <4f8e5eab-eb15-a70a-56df-f018844312a0@riseup.net> Message-ID: On 09/11/2016 01:38 AM, Andr? Silva wrote: > On 09/10/2016 08:50 PM, IngeGNUe wrote: >> >> On 09/09/2016 08:18 PM, Andr? Silva wrote: >>> We're very happy to announce that we have the GNU and Bola comic book >>> titled "IoT" available in British English language! >>> >>> Parabola is always looking for new volunteers, then if you have a >>> understanding of written English and a good command of your native >>> language, you can certainly engage in translation, or do proof-reading. >>> Writing good English is not necessary! >> >> Awesome, I have finished a Spanish translation. > > Cool, thanks btw, could you upgrade your spanish version? i mean it since i pushed some changes in the en_GB version [0], pt_BR and fr_FR were upgraded... [0]:https://git.parabola.nu/multimedia/p4pm.git/commit/?id=f03f2545b2423367729b36aa3911ce4c30240de1 -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 801 bytes Desc: OpenPGP digital signature URL: From adfeno at openmailbox.org Sun Sep 11 11:39:09 2016 From: adfeno at openmailbox.org (Adonay Felipe Nogueira) Date: Sun, 11 Sep 2016 08:39:09 -0300 Subject: [Dev] [News] GNU and Bola comic book titled "IoT" is available in British English language! In-Reply-To: References: <766de3c9-9210-852a-ee17-0c6cf2489b3f@riseup.net> <1473531162.13575.36.camel@adfeno-VPCEG17FB> Message-ID: <1473593949.19103.8.camel@adfeno-VPCEG17FB> The article is attached in this email. Is it OK for you to read Brazilian Portuguese? Or do you want me to translate it? Remember: The article is "non-official", in the sense that it was never reviewed and published by a journal. For those wanting to know the license of the article: I decided to put it under CC BY-SA 4.0 since: * Only one reference is under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. That one article happens to be the one being reviewed, so I might have to change the whole article if I publish it somewhere. * The remaining five references are either under CC BY or CC BY-SA. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Review - O que ? Internet das Coisas.odt Type: application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text Size: 78742 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 213 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part URL: From lovell.joshyyy at gmail.com Sun Sep 11 18:14:55 2016 From: lovell.joshyyy at gmail.com (Josh Branning) Date: Sun, 11 Sep 2016 19:14:55 +0100 Subject: [Dev] [News] GNU and Bola comic book titled "IoT" is available in British English language! In-Reply-To: <1473593949.19103.8.camel@adfeno-VPCEG17FB> References: <766de3c9-9210-852a-ee17-0c6cf2489b3f@riseup.net> <1473531162.13575.36.camel@adfeno-VPCEG17FB> <1473593949.19103.8.camel@adfeno-VPCEG17FB> Message-ID: <57D59F1F.2080504@gmail.com> On 11/09/16 12:39, Adonay Felipe Nogueira wrote: > The article is attached in this email. > > Is it OK for you to read Brazilian Portuguese? Or do you want me to > translate it? > > Remember: The article is "non-official", in the sense that it was never > reviewed and published by a journal. > > For those wanting to know the license of the article: I decided to put > it under CC BY-SA 4.0 since: > > * Only one reference is under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. That one article happens > to be the one being reviewed, so I might have to change the whole > article if I publish it somewhere. > * The remaining five references are either under CC BY or CC BY-SA. > > > > _______________________________________________ > Dev mailing list > Dev at lists.parabola.nu > https://lists.parabola.nu/mailman/listinfo/dev > Hi, I for one would quite like to read an English version of this. Josh From emulatorman at riseup.net Sun Sep 11 22:52:56 2016 From: emulatorman at riseup.net (=?UTF-8?Q?Andr=c3=a9_Silva?=) Date: Sun, 11 Sep 2016 19:52:56 -0300 Subject: [Dev] [News] GNU Free Documentation License 1.3 has been added as one of the license alternatives for PMC (Parabola Multimedia Collections) Message-ID: <420f5d9d-3577-2f4b-498a-68682b2be201@riseup.net> We want to announce that GNU Free Documentation License 1.3 [0] has been added as one of the license alternatives for PMC (Parabola Multimedia Collections) from now on. So far, we had only Free Art License 1.3 [1] and Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License [2] as options for redistribute and/or modify our multimedia files through the wiki [3], repo [4] and git [5] for PMC (Parabola Multimedia Collections), formerly PAC (Parabola Art Collections) and POM (Parabola Official Multimedia). However, Richard Stallman suggested us use the GNU Free Documentation License 1.3 [0] as one of the license alternatives to make compatible with FSF works, so we want to be thankful for his suggestion! [0]:https://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl-1.3.en.html [1]:http://artlibre.org/licence/lal/en/ [2]:http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ [3]:https://wiki.parabola.nu/Multimedia [4]:https://repomirror.parabola.nu/src/others/multimedia/pom/ [5]:https://git.parabola.nu/multimedia/pac.git -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 801 bytes Desc: OpenPGP digital signature URL: From fauno at endefensadelsl.org Mon Sep 12 01:46:59 2016 From: fauno at endefensadelsl.org (fauno) Date: Sun, 11 Sep 2016 22:46:59 -0300 Subject: [Dev] [News] GNU and Bola comic book titled "IoT" is available in British English language! In-Reply-To: <1473593949.19103.8.camel@adfeno-VPCEG17FB> References: <766de3c9-9210-852a-ee17-0c6cf2489b3f@riseup.net> <1473531162.13575.36.camel@adfeno-VPCEG17FB> <1473593949.19103.8.camel@adfeno-VPCEG17FB> Message-ID: <87mvjdga98.fsf@endefensadelsl.org> Adonay Felipe Nogueira writes: > [ Unknown signature status ] > The article is attached in this email. > > Is it OK for you to read Brazilian Portuguese? Or do you want me to > translate it? > > Remember: The article is "non-official", in the sense that it was never > reviewed and published by a journal. > > For those wanting to know the license of the article: I decided to put > it under CC BY-SA 4.0 since: > > * Only one reference is under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. That one article happens > to be the one being reviewed, so I might have to change the whole > article if I publish it somewhere. > * The remaining five references are either under CC BY or CC BY-SA. you can put the article under a free license even if your quotes and references aren't free! -- http://partidopirata.com.ar -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 584 bytes Desc: not available URL: From lkcl at lkcl.net Mon Sep 12 05:19:38 2016 From: lkcl at lkcl.net (Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton) Date: Mon, 12 Sep 2016 06:19:38 +0100 Subject: [Dev] [Arm-netbook] [libreplanet-discuss] EOMA68 and freedom in digital technology In-Reply-To: <1473599051.1220.43.camel@paulk.fr> References: <1473599051.1220.43.camel@paulk.fr> Message-ID: --- crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68 On Sun, Sep 11, 2016 at 2:04 PM, Paul Kocialkowski wrote: > Hi, > > Le samedi 10 septembre 2016 ? 20:38 +0100, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton a > ?crit : >> > > I disagree. There is simply nothing you can compare this project to. We >> > > are achieving results that can't be demonstrated via any other means. If >> > > we could get here some other way at a lower cost with the same long term >> > > impact I would have gone that route. >> > >> > See what Olimex has been doing for years then. >> >> you're aware that olimex operates as a criminal cartel, > > This is a very strong accusation and I definitely do not share that perspective, > at all. it dates back several years. tsvetan's reaction when i brought this up on the gpl-violations mailing list was to try to belittle me (in front of 20,000 people) as a way to dodge the question. "what are you talking about, idiot, you've totally failed to even bother to release any product, what a total waster you are, har har, go away little loser i don't have to answer your question because you are such a failure" was the general gist of his response. >> from shipping >> GPL-violating A10 bootloaders and kernels provided by Allwinner, back >> around 2011/2012? > > Olimex has always been about producing community-friendly boards, not about the > software. Nevertheless, Olimex has been involved with the linux-sunxi community > from the early days paul: you may not be aware that the linux-sunxi community formed around the arm-netbook mailing list and resources. the people using the resources that i set up decided to *create* the sunxi mailing list and wiki and to form their own community. > and has always been very supportive, by providing developers > with hardware to work on, taking part in the community, etc. that doesn't change the fact that the very early boards with the A10 processor were shipped by default with allwinner's original GPL-violating bootloader, u-boot and linux kernel. now, the GPL is very very clear: on request you must supply the *EXACT* source and *EXACT* tools used to compile the *EXACT* binaries that were shipped. if you can't do that, you MUST cease and desist distribution. if you do not cease and desist distribution, you are no longer in compliance with the license. if you are no longer in compliance with the license but CONTINUE to distribute GPL code (without a license), *that* is criminal infringement. and if a company is in criminal infringement of copyright law, the company is no longer operating as a company but is in fact an organised crime syndicate: a criminal cartel. > What software they ship, or used to ship by default is IMHO a bit irrelevant. > They shipped whatever Allwinner provided ... which was GPL violating. which was why i never shipped product. i waited until the full GPL source was available. which took several years. > but always supported community free software effort. > Also, when they started with Allwinner, mainline software > wasn't an option. that's no excuse, paul. you're aware that it was me who released the very first allwinner u-boot and linux kernel sources, for the a10? i obtained them from allwinner and immediately made them available on git.rhombus-tech.net. tom cubie, who was an allwinner employee at the time, bought some Mele A1000s and, in a very enterprising spirit, sold them as $50 developer boards from his aliexpress account. from there he went on to develop his own company, made the first cubieboard and began selling it. at around the same time the linux-sunxi community was set up... but it *started* on arm-netbook. >> you're also aware that with the sole exception of >> the olimex laptop's PCBs the only thing that they provide is >> auto-generated PDFs *from* the schematics source code... not the >> actual schematics and certainly not the PCB design files? > > Huh? This is factually not correct. Olimex has released the PCB source designs > of a number of Allwinner boards. That's what those .brd and .sch files are at: > https://github.com/OLIMEX/OLINUXINO/tree/master/HARDWARE/ yeah, elena kindly pointed this out as well [on arm-netbook - thanks elena, really appreciated that you - and paul too - corrected me here] i've been head-down on the eoma68 designs for the last three of the past five years, so wasn't even aware these resources *existed*. > Better yet, the latest one (A64) was designed with KiCad, so those design > sources can even be handled with free software! This is an unprecedented > achievement that even the EOMA68 project has not reached (yet). there's a reason for that: i'm not an electronics engineer (and KiCAD simply wasn't ready for use). five years ago i asked on the arm-netbook mailing list if anybody would like to help out, in return for profit-sharing in the end result. due to some "deliberate" misunderstandings (which are still going around the internet) various people saw my offer as a "demand" instead of what it genuinely was: an offer to share in the profits. i won't go into details. so, i began to try to use KiCAD myself (see http://git.rhombus-tech.net/?p=eoma.git). it didn't go very well. there were some severe bugs in KiCAD (that have still yet to be fixed) that make using KiCAD for such large BGA ICs a near impossibility: i had to hand-edit the library parts. when it came to actually doing the PCBs the lack of professional-level features met head-long with my lack of knowledge of electronics CAD design and i began to realise very very quickly that i was completely out of my depth. rather than end up spending time (and money) doing iterative PCB design (which could be a bottomless pit) i made a number of other efforts to invite other people to profit-share in the planned project scope, but in the end these also fell through and i had to teach myself electronics CAD design. with no experience in this field i was forced into the position of first paying people to do CAD designs for me, and then later when there wasn't a financial budget available, learning and using the professional CAD software that we'd paid those people to develop the designs in. now, EOMA68 succeeds in the engineering arena by making it simpler for people to update sophisticated products at a fraction of the cost of other "monolithic" designs. a "monolithic" design is typically a minimum of a 4-layer PCB to cover the SoC and the DDR3 RAM. if there's a 64-bit RAM path you are usually looking at a 6-layer or 8-layer PCB. that's *expensive* territory: $700 for QTY 5 PCBs, $400 for components, and $600 for assembly. make a single mistake and it's another $1800 and another 4-6 weeks turnaround. and at the end of all that effort, you're "on the clock" as to the usefulness of the product, because the key part - the processor - is going to be superceded very very quickly. with specialist vendor-lockin on the various interfaces you're even *more* on the hook, especially if the fabless semi company doing the SoC doesn't "grok" libre principles and releases GPL-violating android-only binaries. now, what if there were "modules" which you knew complied to a simple interface that you could just get off-the-shelf, even from Best Buy or Walmart, and could make a simply 2-layer PCB around it? that would be amazing, wouldn't it? what would be even better would be if there were plenty of example schematics and PCB designs around that you could work from, that were simple 2-layer PCBs that you could pay china or eastern european companies to make with a 48-hour turnaround at the fraction of the cost of 4+ layer PCBs? it would be *even better* if those reference designs were available as gEDA or KiCAD designs, wouldn't it? so this is why i started that KiCAD-based set of designs back in 2011... unfortunately i haven't had time to come back and revisit them. i understand from joe micha that KiCAD has a "Gerber Import" feature, so it *should* be possible to import (and recreate) KiCAD GPL compliant sources from pretty much any proprietary CAD package, with quite a bit of work. i hear also that there are some proprietary importers... it's complicated, hazardous, but doable. all of these things i haven't got time to do immediately, myself, but it is definitely part of the vision - it always was. i've not been talking much online about these things because i've had to focus instead on "getting it done". bringing the project out of that critical "vapourware" barrier... but sticking to > Get https://github.com/OLIMEX/OLINUXINO/tree/master/HARDWARE/A64-OLinuXino/A64-O > linuXino_Rev_A and open it up with KiCad if you wish to see for yourself! when the A64 doesn't require a proprietary bootloader, i'll start the evaluation process again. however given that the A64 is a 40nm IC and the Cortex A53 is 15% more power-hungry performance-watt-wise than a Cortex A7 *and* it's limited to 2GB RAM as a hard limit, i'm much more inclined to go with a quad-core Cortex A7 instead, or an 8-core 28nm (or both). currently "in the slot" for evaluation is the Samsung/Nexell S5P6818 and the Allwinner R40. both of those are an improvement over the A64. the S5P6818 is a 28nm octa-core A53 so is power-equivalent to the R40 (40-28nm is a 2x power improvement, but it's double the number of cores so roughly back up to the same power usage). we don't yet know what geometry the R40 is, but if we assume it's 40nm then it will be at least 15% more power-efficient than the A64. basically it's highly likely that i'll skip the A64 entirely. >> > They're also coming up with a laptop design. >> >> ... where they've taken off-the-shelf china-sourced (proprietary) >> casework: i started the GPLv3+ casework project for the EOMA68 15.6in >> laptop housing *two years* ago as a completely and fully libre >> project. you can verify that by looking at the git commit logs. > > Of course, I do agree that free mechanical designs are important and a great > thing to have, so I'm very happy that the EOMA laptop housing design is free. > > But my focus here was about digital technology, not mechanical parts. This is > out of that scope. > >> tsvetan has caused a hell of a lot of trouble for the EOMA68 project >> and has sponged off of the resources of a *lot* of people. he truly >> doesn't understand the word "libre". at all. > > I don't share that perspective. you didn't see the message he wrote (and deleted in under 48 hours) when he announced the A64 laptop project. when somebody pointed out that the A64 SDK was *yet another* example of GPL-violating crapware from allwinner, and that it contained a proprietary early-bootloader as well as GPL-violating binary-only libraries (libnand... AGAIN... god those scripts from tom cubie's manager back in 2011 have got to die...) tsvetan responded something along the lines of, "to be honest i really don't understand the fuss over this proprietary blob stuff". when i returned 48 hours later he'd deleted the message. > I think his contribution to freedom in digital > technology has been solid and significant. > The devices he's producing show as much. given that he's released the designs of a number of products - libre-licensed full SCH and PCB files which i wasn't aware of before - i have to agree with you. but be under absolutely no illusion that it's all "roses". he's prepared to compromise on ethics (because he doesn't understand their importance - as in he *genuinely* doesn't understand it). he'd rather take your money. >> also, the A64's processor - which tsvetan is using for the olimex >> laptop - requires a proprietary early-bootloader. in fact, the first >> A64 SDK that came out was an absolute mess, comprising several GPL >> violations in both the early-bootloader, the u-boot source *and* the >> linux kernel. the SDK was even exclusively distributed over a chinese >> illegal filesharing network (this is an "official" released SDK from >> allwinner!) > > Of course, we all know that, but that's how you move forward! We can't just wait > for the situation to be magically resolved before considering producing hardware > with it, and staying away from it with a teen-feet-pole before. true. > Simply because > no change will ensue of that. Olimex has the ability to create boards early-on, > that will encourage the community to work on this chip, and also create leverage > with Allwinner. ok. right. are you familiar with the story behind the Allwinner R8 "NextThingCo" "CHIP" computer? that was going to be a GPL-violating product until some people on the crowd-funding campaign pointed out that it would be a bit of a problem for a USA-based company to be importing copyright-violating product. so, NextThingCo had a rather urgent meeting with Allwinner (one of the team worked for them so knew who to call), and basically "put their foot down". they said, in effect, "give us the source, or you don't get the order. oh... and we have 50,000 orders". end result? allwinner's R-Series team is now scrambling to get fully GPL-compliant source code out the door (and i am arranging to go over to the main office in Zhuhai in a few days time to help them out). *THIS* is what both Pine64 and Tsvetan *SHOULD* have done with the A64. they should have said, "give us the source, or you don't get our money". it's only 200 lines of code in this case: libdram is mostly identical in all versions, there's one main function (the DDR3 initialisation). because they *didn't* put their foot down when it mattered, the sunxi community is now forced to reverse-engineer libdram. these kinds of compromises when it matters are *VITAL* lost opportunities.... all because people like Tsvetan and the team at Pine64 prefer to take your money. > So it's really not about what the situation is right now, but about what it can > possibly become. Allwinner chips have *always* been a mess to deal with at > first, but efforts from companies like Olimex and the community made it possible > to have the kind of support we know today for chips like the A20. paul, i reiterate here: the sunxi community exists because of my early efforts :) i *am* aware of the sunxi community's work since then: i've been an indirect contributor myself (i did the reverse-engineering of USB-FEL that allowed the sunxi-tools fel-boot program to be completed - i used usbmon from outside of a qemu session running LIVESUIT.EXE to sniff the usb traffic). > Also bear in mind that you were able to get the EOMA68 together, with that level > of free software support, in part thanks to people like Tsvetan who put together > (free hardware) boards for the community to work on those chips and supported > their efforts early on, when the situation is indeed a mess. this isn't historically accurate: back in 2010, 2011 it was my first release of the A10 u-boot and kernel source, and the rhombus-tech wiki, arm-netbook mailing list and irc channel, using the Mele A1000 and then tom cubie's cubieboards that allowed the sunxi community to first form: tsvetan's boards came out at least a year later (i think) than the first cubieboard. *later* boards - around... probably something like.... 2012: *then* yes, you are correct. >> over a considerable period of time, pine64 and the sunxi community >> worked to eliminate as many of those GPL violations as they could, but >> Allwinner insisted on keeping the early-bootloader proprietary. >> >> so at present the A64 is classified as a "non-libre" processor. that >> it's the basis of the olimex laptop tells you everything you need to >> know. > > Again, you're looking at the situation right now, which indeed matches what you > describe. However, I think Olimex sees a lot of potential in A64 and so do I. > Only time will tell whether it was a dead-end or not. > >> now, whilst tsevtan is making money selling you hardware that requires >> non-free components to operate basic functions, i've put my foot down >> and said NO, i will NOT sell GPL-violating product. i don't care if >> that means it's harder to deliver ethical products, i'll deal with >> that on an ongoing basis, but here's the thing: it means i've >> established a reputation for setting some ethical rules *AND STUCK TO >> THEM*. > > Frankly, I don't care that a device doesn't work with free software right now if > it has potential to be liberated eventually this is an extremely exhausting approach that burdens the entire sunxi community with a hell of a lot of unpaid work.... and will result in each and every processor being *years* behind. if it takes 2 years to complete the reverse-engineering, that's an *entire generation* behind! look at how long it took to get the full source together for the A20! in the meantime the A33, A31, A83 *and* the A64 came out! as a community we simply cannot be expected to shoulder the burden of responsibility for clearing up Allwinner's mess, only to be "rewarded" with having to tolerate being at least *TWO YEARS* behind the times in terms of what processors are available for us to use in libre projects! that's completely insane! no. i REJECT that approach. > But of course, Olimex and you are not in the same position. it's much more than that. i'm first and foremost a software libre engineer and advocate. i place libre principles FIRST. i do NOT place "making money" first and foremost. i choose NOT to compromise on software freedom. and i also choose to FIND WAYS to GET software freedom and to create an ethical business. so it's not that we are not "in the same position", it's that we operate *FROM* totally different positions. Tsvetan (and pine64, and numerous china-based OEMs) operate from the basis of "money first, software freedom second". > I'm really surprised that you don't see things this way and attack Olimex for > what level of support their latest products have *right now*. as you can see from the length of what i've outlined above, it's complicated. summary is: if you're prepared to prioritise "making money" over "libre principles", basically you'll never get the source. continuing to give money to allwinner *without* asking for the source will basically give them the message that it's *OKAY* for them to continue to violate the GPL. NextThingCo's ballsy gamble is working. it's got the message across to the R-Series team that they *have* to release the source. remember: allwinner is a complicated company. there are multiple very powerful investors, all of them carving out their own niches under the "umbrella" of what we *believe* - from the outside - is a single unified organisation: nothing could be further from the truth. >> > I agree that you went steps further than most before, but this is >> > incremental improvement, not something truly new and groundbreaking compared >> > to >> > what existed before. >> >> hmmm, an interesting perspective, which i feel may be based on not >> being aware of the sheer overwhelming number of issues being tackled >> (all at once). >> >> yes it's "incremental improvement" but it's a MASSIVE stack of >> MULTIPLE "incremental improvements", all done at once. > > From what I can see, the actual improvements (again, from the digital technology > side of things, so I'm not including the mechanical design) come down to not > including a Wi-Fi chip that requires proprietary software in a laptop design, > which is what had been lacking from the ARM Chromebooks. If you see anything > else, please state it clearly. there's too much to cover, paul. i'm not saying that lightly: the fact that the ecocomputing whitepaper is seventeen *thousand* words long is testament to that. it's not even specifically about the actual *hardware*: the actual hardware specs is just a "response" (if you will) to the systemic approach that i've taken, after doing an extremely comprehensive analysis of the entire computing industry. if you start with the whitepaper you'll begin to get a feel for what EOMA68 is really about. http://rhombus-tech.net/whitepapers/ecocomputing_07sep2015/ you have to bear in mind that the reactions of various people back in 2011 to what i was doing were so "wtf??" that i realised that i wasn't going to get anywhere until i had working hardware. that took 3-4 years to get to the crowdfunding campaign, which meant that there's been 3-4 *years* where i've been almost completely out of the picture in the software libre world, it's been so intense that i had to just "get on with it" (and i realised that i wasn't going to get any help, so *had* to get it done myself). the crowdfunding campaign was - is - just the beginning of emerging from an extremely intense period of work, learning an entirely new field (hardware design) in order to be in a position to influence an entire industry and turn it away from the entropic field of "proprietary software / hardware because it's cheaper". reality is: it *isn't* cheaper (long-term). > There are also rare occurences in your design, meaning that only few products > before (such as the ARM Chromebooks or the Novena) had reached that level of > support, such as: using a SoC that has few freedom flaws (GPU), having a free > software keyboard controller. We could also add free hardware design there (but > I'm still a bit confused about what the situation actually is and didn't take > the time to look it up properly). dr stallman and i have been talking about this (privately). the terms "open hardware", "open source hardware" and "libre hardware" are *all* very misleading, because "hardware" could mean *anything*. it could be spoons, it could be heavy machinery, it could be casework, it could be PCBs, it could be ASICs (actual silicon ICs). so the whole episode (this thread) comes back to all of us (as a community) using a rather thoroughly ambiguous term. if we want to be clear, we should be using the words "libre PCB designs", "libre casework designs" and so on - *not* "libre hardware". it's way too general. ... oops... :) > If you feel like I'm missing something substantial, please let me know. you're missing an entire five years of work - the entire rhombus-tech initiative - which has run in parallel in the background side-by-side with the sunxi community efforts. i've stayed off of the sunxi resources because they're using nonfree infrastructure. sunxi mailing list: runs off the non-free google groups. sunxi git repositories: runs off the non-free github repositories. the key developers know me (because they were originally members of the arm-netbook mailing list), and we do occasionally talk (in private email) - but most people who use the sunxi mailing list don't even know that i exist. >> *nobody* has tried to do that before. not Dell, not Olimex, not IBM >> - *nobody*. >> >> for example you compare the EOMA68 Housing to the olimex laptop. the >> olimex laptop's casework is proprietary (the EOMA68 Housing's is >> GPLv3+ libre-licensed). so automatically you can see that it's >> nowhere near being a legitimate comparison. > > Again, my point is about digital technology here, not mechanical parts. i'm lost, sorry. i don't quite follow what the term "digital technology" refers to, but you use the term again below so i think i might have been able to deduce what you mean from context... correct me if i'm wrong. >> > > The issue is your looking at one thing. A few specs. It's not the specs? >> > > that matter. It's the standard, it's the modularization, it's the? >> > > response and cooperation we are getting already as a result of our? >> > > actions here, etc. Intel and AMD are not going to cooperate and building? >> > > off of other companies products (higher up the chain) is not a reliable? >> > > long term solution. >> > >> > Again, I don't see how modularization changes anything here. >> >> you can't focus on just the one aspect and conclude that "it's not >> significant". bear in mind that this has been a 5 year project, where >> i've had 15 years of working near-exclusively with software libre, >> looking at the endemic and systemic problems and coming up with a >> *long-term* strategy to tackle *all* of the issues associated with the >> consequences of proprietary computing... *all at once*. >> >> modularisation (and having open standards despite what the >> wikipedia-page-that's-already-scheduled-for-deletion would have you >> believe) is one - *one* - critical - *critical* part of that strategy. > > Again, everything you can do with modularization you could do by producing new > versions of boards. no, you can't. read the ecocomputing whitepaper [and scan back up several paragraphs] > It solves the environmental problem and is convenient to > users, but has little to do with freedom in digital technology. you're correct here (and this is why i said that you're missing the point by focussing exclusively on *one* aspect). so if you *only* focus on the modularity, you'll be completely lost and won't understand. what is needed is to have modularity... *AND* commit to software libre ethical principles. making this clear is extremely hard to do. even the fact that i've just added a DRM section (it's banned) to the EOMA68 standard *still* doesn't really get the full message across. > If you have > actual specific point to counter those points (other than vague statements like > "part of a strategy"), I'd be happy to react to them. it's complicated, paul, and i'll be absolutely honest with you: i'm *working out* how to get it across, what i'm doing and why. *five years* and i still haven't been able to put what i'm doing into a simple clear statement... because of the sheer overwhelming depth and scale of what i'm attempting to do. it's so ambitious and audacious that when i start explain it, many people react with total disbelief, calling me "arrogant", "deluded" and many many other things which goes a long, long way to explaining the rather vehement reactions that you will see evidence of (if you look carefully enough). so if you can promise *not* to react in the same way, i'll make an effort to explain. deal? >> > Hardware availability has never been the problem. >> >> libre hardware availability has *always* been a problem. entropy >> guarantees that it always will. you actually have to make a concerted >> continuous effort to push back against the corner-cost-cutting of the >> mass-volume industry. > > So if we're talking about free hardware projects, then I'll agree that the > situation hasn't been that great. As far as I know, only Olimex, Novena and a > few others have been producing free hardware computers that work well with free > software. > > But again, I'm still confused about the hardware freedom situation of your > device. The most meaningful part is, of course, the EOMA68 board with the A20, > not the carriers (even though having them as free hardware is very nice). as i have the right (under the GPL) to release the CAD designs when i actually ship, that's what i'll be doing. if i release the designs *right now*, there's the severe risk that somebody may take the designs and manufacture them *in advance* of me fulfilling my committment to the backers of the campaign. i *specifically state* - very very clearly - right there on the crowdfunding campaign page - that this is why i will not be IMMEDIATELY releasing the EOMA68-A20 CAD designs. and i *specifically state* that *everything else* is made available in advance. this fits closely with the EOMA68 strategy from an engineering perspective, because the "computer" bit is not something that you should be manufacturing in small volumes anyway: the whole point is that if people group together to do "bulk buys" of EOMA68-XXX computing modules, everybody benefits from mass-volume bulk volume pricing whilst being at liberty to design and manufacture much simpler "Housings" using only 2-layer boards. > On the other hand, the availability of boards that have components that work > well with free software have never been a problem, there's not discussion to > have here. > >> > For laptops, we only had minor >> > annoyances,?like Wi-Fi chips that require proprietary firmwares, >> >> proprietary firmware for WIFI is a bit more than a "minor" annoyance, paul! > > That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that there are easy and nearly painless > ways to solve these problems, by using external ath9k_htc USB dongles. you're aware that my sponsor, chris from thinkpenguin, was responsible for bringing us the ath9k_htc libre firmware? that chris's business model is founded around exactly the same ethical committment to libre principles as are behind the EOMA68 initiative is a big, big clue :) >> no, paul, what you're missing here is that there's an *active >> committment* to tackling the pain, cost burden and inconvenience that >> proprietary software (and hardware) causes. > > Well, I have been talking about the freedom situation in digital technology all > along, not commitment. I do agree that commitment such as the one displayed with > your project is a rare thing. i'm prepared to prioritise libre principles over profit maximising, that's all there is to it. the interesting side-effect of that is that i've had to get *really* creative about how to fulfil the goal [of bringing libre principles to mass-volume products]. > And that is indeed groundbreaking (even though > projects like the Novena were here before), you _are_ aware that the EOMA68 initiative _pre-dates_ the Novena, right? :) > because that kind of intent is > clearly lacking from e.g. companies producing Chromebooks, so it rather feels > like we got lucky (or that people inside these companies care a lot, but it > doesn't reflect in the company's PR). yeah. i think now that chromebooks are out of the "R&D" phase (where they began solely as a google initiative) and are now seen as an actual profitable thing to "copy", we now see third party companies independently designing chromebooks *without* the assistance or involvement of google-sponsored engineering... ... and that's where you end up with the cost-cutting exercises such as "using SD/MMC soldered-down SIP modules onto the main PCB which require proprietary firmware" now, here's where it gets interesting, because if you create an EOMA68 chrome OS computer card, libre compliance is pretty much a "hard requirement"... because if it's not, chances are quite high that that EOMA68 ChromeOS Card *won't work* in Housings that require proprietary firmware. why is that? it's because you can't predict what peripherals future Housings will have... so you have to always upgrade the OS on the Computer Card (so that it's always compatible with the latest and greatest Housings and any newer peripherals that might be in them).... now you have to include *all* the bits of firmware that you can possibly get your hands on, and if those are non-free proprietary WIFI firmware blobs, now it gets really complicated. but if they're *libre* firmware, it's a hell of a lot easier. i really must put this as an "advisory" on the EOMA68 standard.... another thing for the TODO list... > Commitment is important for the long run, so I'm really glad you're around. We > can't just rely on sheer luck to get devices that do well with free software > from mainstream manufacturers, even though we've had good luck a great number of > times already (and bad luck an astonishingly greater number of times, too). yyyeah... i learned recently that the latest chromebooks have integrated WIFI (with proprietary firmware... argh) whereas previously they had WIFI-as-a-USB-based-module-over-a-four-wire-cable). cost-cutting exercises are clearly beginning to creep into chromebook designs.... oops. >> .... it's a vicious self-sustaining cycle that has to be broken by an >> *active* committment. > > Definitely, that's a (if not the only) reliable (but harder and perhaps more > dangerous) way to achieve progress for freedom in digital technology. Going with > luck has worked well in some areas (again, ARM Chromebooks), but we knows when > our luck will turn. yeahyeah. it's why "businesses" (corporations) will never be trusted to deliver (even at their own long-term expense), because they have to prioritise "profit" above all else. USB-based WIFI dongles ($3) are *always* going to be more expensive than soldered-down SD/MMC-based SIP "modules" ($1.50)... > Even though this conversation may have taken a harsh tone at times and places, I > do believe we share the same views and only disagree on details (which fill up > most of our discussions here). I hope this is clear and this discussion doesn't > come across as a strong attack against what you're doing! not at all. it's through these kinds of conversations that i'll be able to clarify what the hell it is that i've been up to for five years. l. From cascardo at cascardo.eti.br Mon Sep 12 23:19:44 2016 From: cascardo at cascardo.eti.br (Thadeu Lima de Souza Cascardo) Date: Mon, 12 Sep 2016 20:19:44 -0300 Subject: [Dev] [libreplanet-discuss] [Arm-netbook] EOMA68 and freedom in digital technology In-Reply-To: References: <1473599051.1220.43.camel@paulk.fr> Message-ID: <20160912231943.px3gtnizwnonzh65@siri.cascardo.eti.br> On Mon, Sep 12, 2016 at 06:19:38AM +0100, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote: [...] > that doesn't change the fact that the very early boards with the A10 > processor were shipped by default with allwinner's original > GPL-violating bootloader, u-boot and linux kernel. now, the GPL is > very very clear: on request you must supply the *EXACT* source and > *EXACT* tools used to compile the *EXACT* binaries that were shipped. > > if you can't do that, you MUST cease and desist distribution. if > you do not cease and desist distribution, you are no longer in > compliance with the license. if you are no longer in compliance with > the license but CONTINUE to distribute GPL code (without a license), > *that* is criminal infringement. > > and if a company is in criminal infringement of copyright law, the > company is no longer operating as a company but is in fact an > organised crime syndicate: a criminal cartel. [...] Hi, Luke. I appreciate a lot the work you have been doing. I can share some of your feelings as well, as I have done some work to liberate a version of Arduino, using Kicad, with my partner, who was an engineer. And I also feel very angry about GPL violations as well, starting some contributions to Linux in the hope I could do enforcement as a copyright holder. Now, I need to step in and say that accusing copyright infringement of criminal offense is very dangerous. Unfortunately, some copyright infringement in some jurisdictions is considered a crime. And that's bad for the people in general, who cannot share because of copyright law and can't benefit from research done by others, who may be specially endangered because of laws like DMCA. In my opinion, we should not vouch for such laws, even if they were to protect software freedom. That's not to say that it is immoral to take software freedom from people, more so if that freedom was available as a copyleft work. And maybe even that it should be illegal to do so. But it should not be a criminal offense, but a civil one. Regards. Cascardo. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 801 bytes Desc: not available URL: From franco.masotti at student.unife.it Tue Sep 13 17:30:54 2016 From: franco.masotti at student.unife.it (Franco Masotti) Date: Tue, 13 Sep 2016 19:30:54 +0200 Subject: [Dev] Migration from the GNU/Linux distribution of Antergos Message-ID: <20160913173054.GA738@pc-mini-2> Hello everyone, fyi, I've added the page [1] in the wiki. I've used the Manjaro page as template. I tried the migration under qemu with the following configurations: Host = Parabola GNU/Linux-libre x86_64 Guest = Antergos x86_64 (Gnome && Mate) When I tried the Gnome version, qemu freezed right in the middle of the substitution of Antergos packages. So when I have rebooted the machine it just freezed at the grub since the grub mkconfig command was not issued. Then I tried the Mate version. I was able to complete the migration, however a few minutes later it just freezed again :( This time it seemed fine at the reboot, but the only (black) destop panel available before the migration (strange since mate should have the traditional Gnome menus) dissapeared. So I was left with a useless greenish passive desktop (right click didn't do anything). This is very strange... I don't know if it's an issue of qemu or Antergos... It would be interesting to try the migration process on real hardware to see if the same issue occurs. Of course we also need to be certain that all non free stuff gets removed with the migration steps I've proposed. For this reason I added a warning: Warning: This method has not been thoroughly tested, so it might be inaccurate. Cheers. [1]: -- Franco Masotti Tox ID (voip): 9D855839E4BB0ADBF4F49063BF2ABC1479A7728011F20B563EA104B2EE10FF19DC8C255D8F3D My public key fingerprint: F13C 27D7 EDF0 4F7C 0A9F 1244 9A11 29F0 4019 6B95 Get my public key like this: $ gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys 40196B95 Use Parabola GNU/Linux-libre: Use Replicant ROM: Use GNUpot: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 455 bytes Desc: not available URL: From lkcl at lkcl.net Tue Sep 13 22:48:56 2016 From: lkcl at lkcl.net (Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton) Date: Tue, 13 Sep 2016 23:48:56 +0100 Subject: [Dev] Misleading information in EOMA68 news In-Reply-To: <57D43BA3.7060007@ceata.org> References: <1471280979.9327.12.camel@paulk.fr> <57D43BA3.7060007@ceata.org> Message-ID: sorted and added chmods to the Makefile so it doesn't happen again. --- crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68 On Sat, Sep 10, 2016 at 5:58 PM, Tiberiu-Cezar Tehnoetic wrote: > Hi, > > On 10.09.2016 19:43, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote: >> http://hands.com/~lkcl/eoma/microdesktop > > This link with and without trailing slash returns 403 Forbidden. > > Could you please check? > > Thanks, > Tiberiu From lkcl at lkcl.net Wed Sep 14 00:07:35 2016 From: lkcl at lkcl.net (Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton) Date: Wed, 14 Sep 2016 01:07:35 +0100 Subject: [Dev] [libreplanet-discuss] EOMA68 and freedom in digital technology In-Reply-To: <57D467FC.7070800@gmail.com> References: <57D467FC.7070800@gmail.com> Message-ID: --- crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68 On Sat, Sep 10, 2016 at 9:07 PM, Josh Branning wrote: > On 10/09/16 20:38, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote: >>> >>> See what Olimex has been doing for years then. >> >> >> you're aware that olimex operates as a criminal cartel, from shipping >> GPL-violating A10 bootloaders and kernels provided by Allwinner, back >> around 2011/2012? you're also aware that with the sole exception of >> the olimex laptop's PCBs the only thing that they provide is >> auto-generated PDFs *from* the schematics source code... not the >> actual schematics and certainly not the PCB design files? > > > I think this is a little unfair to Olimex and is at least partially untrue. > For instance, schematics and pcb files CAN be found, for most of their > boards. [1] yes - you're catching up (three people kindly pointed this out) > Unlike your boards, which give a 404 forbidden message when trying to access > the server. [2] Hopefully this is something you can correct. it has. explained also in other posts since you replied to this. > Though I can see that the advantage over the Olimex boards is that you ship > with a libre operating system from the start. which gives you a clear message: i will *not* compromise on software freedom for the purposes of profit maximisation. actually it's more specific than that: i will NOT put designs into people's hands when i know that they will become distressed as a result (due to viruses emptying their bank accounts, or being forced to spend money on throwing away perfectly good hardware due to software driver incompatibility and so on). > In regards to the A64 (used in the Olimex laptop), /mainline/ u-boot, from > the sunxi.org wiki [3]: u-boot is not the early bootloader. the early bootloader is proprietary. > ' Basic support for the A64 SoC has been been merged into 2016.05-rc1. > This covers UART, MMC and required GPIOs and clocks, but no Ethernet or USB > yet. Also as there is no information on the DRAM controller so far, the SPL > support is not enabled, so boot0 is required at the moment to get U-Boot > loaded. ... and is that early bootloader, boot0, proprietary or not, yes or no? > Also, I think that the Olimex laptop has not yet been released, so that > gives developers time to build more support, before they start selling. meanwhile, the opportunity has been totally lost, to put a financial "foot down" (just as with NextThingCo did with Allwinner over the R8) i.e. to say "no, allwinner, we will *not* place an order for 50,000 units with you *UNTIL* you give us the full source code including the full source code of the early bootloader, boot0" now the sunxi community is expected to pick up the pieces - unpaid - and to clean up allwinner's mess. oh, but worse than that, the team behind the Allwinner A64 think it's *OKAY* to consider boot0 to be proprietary! just because pine64 and olimex took your money instead of setting software freedom as a first priority. tell me: how is that okay? if you *really think* it is okay, explain how. l. From isacdaavid at isacdaavid.info Wed Sep 14 00:15:12 2016 From: isacdaavid at isacdaavid.info (Isaac David) Date: Tue, 13 Sep 2016 19:15:12 -0500 Subject: [Dev] ARM port updates and RFC In-Reply-To: <1472440063.7743.0@plebeian.isacdaavid.info> References: <1472440063.7743.0@plebeian.isacdaavid.info> Message-ID: <1473812112.1150.0@plebeian.isacdaavid.info> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA512 Le dim. 28 ao?t 2016 ? 22:07, Isaac David a ?crit : > As promised, I've made a tiny change to the way ARM packages > are imported, in order to keep noise down at > maintenance at lists. It turns out that Arch ARM is using sort > of corrupt .files databases (some entries are missing > signature fields in the desc files). This causes the inotify > service endowed with tracking changes to databases to crash > upon encountering the first corrupt package, and package > contents aren't being filled in in parabolaweb as a result. > Then when an agent tries to access > https://www.parabola.nu/packages/core/armv7h/acl/files (for > instance), django serves an error. [...] > The downside for building > our own databases from scratch is that the script takes > longer to complete. [...] > PD: I don't know if landing the change will automatically > fix package descriptions for all old broken ARM packages. > We may have to repopulate parabolaweb. Here's a quick follow-up for anyone keeping an eye on this issue: Changes were landed in a new dbscripts release and deployed in the server from there; they worked as expected, including the slowdown. Fixing already-corrupt package descriptions did require us to repopulate parabolaweb's armv7h packages, but everything has been smooth sailing ever since. - -- Isaac David GPG: 38D33EF29A7691134357648733466E12EC7BA943 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iQIcBAEBCgAGBQJX2JYIAAoJEDNGbhLse6lDRpgP/A3nrYOh2BFi1O6BQAMWFZBN Xke1SuX3AyEDbX28kg2IwW4VcWlvjIHswEdxR+/vDd4AFPUgKPAYCjUbA+XC5BMm 5zbj/kVMahAJte3HLIfXlz2jogfTEKob41IaCwJSstGTE/G1oyN4igZJBQd/OSO4 qELg2Sw+c5OTWnQSH74yW8BYiyHYwrkfaBzZISqNqabLfR29xTJfS5vMXIa2MIBu Bx7bi6R7Y2aKeRSGFM7x/Ne8Cyh7JKNeK3PDwG+2MGz+rKKW0cauZWBlhxmBBhnY vUe/PeHnt3QuuDsM956FJi9AoVrYepIk5q8vHZQHrkYBEqaf6gt5rX/WBskhwceJ TrN9bC+uNm2xKTzAFYw5bnVioSP4OsqbpNJDM7ihLktzrPMrYN1GOVXiB+fCrWuv vOg7V6MPPyVTXhF2wZGgdnRFeUuoz5dhuW/g7cXTt8c9Kj748VRc6tDOBf2ACa8S WcGBwNoQFzgkgXQPdOrk7EPWrHuP0H8T5KkYQLXjdsK7ZFKuOxeG9SxYEd66PeTp SlPdGfsDa9qC9XoF3MNYbD/pZAhZAzYLZWTnPF7qNwbKrDrstvbuhesxbvuMFO1W o4sjYlzbAlHaBatv49qM3x+lrmawmpvezMdVhGPwIhVsK7d4O0THHFaMnQzdCkos +LrVXNQS50ug0J/h8IX/ =NTcs -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From contact at paulk.fr Tue Sep 13 20:09:12 2016 From: contact at paulk.fr (Paul Kocialkowski) Date: Tue, 13 Sep 2016 22:09:12 +0200 Subject: [Dev] [Arm-netbook] [libreplanet-discuss] EOMA68 and freedom in digital technology In-Reply-To: References: <1473599051.1220.43.camel@paulk.fr> Message-ID: <1473797352.1262.73.camel@paulk.fr> Hi, Le lundi 12 septembre 2016 ? 06:19 +0100, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton a ?crit?: > On Sun, Sep 11, 2016 at 2:04 PM, Paul Kocialkowski wrote: > > Le samedi 10 septembre 2016 ? 20:38 +0100, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton a > > ?crit : > > > I disagree. There is simply nothing you can compare this project to. > > > > > We > > > > > are achieving results that can't be demonstrated via any other means. > > > > > If > > > > > we could get here some other way at a lower cost with the same long > > > > > term > > > > > impact I would have gone that route. > > > > > > > > See what Olimex has been doing for years then. > > > > > > ?you're aware that olimex operates as a criminal cartel, > > > > This is a very strong accusation and I definitely do not share that > > perspective, > > at all. > > ?it dates back several years.??tsvetan's reaction when i brought this > up on the gpl-violations mailing list was to try to belittle me (in > front of 20,000 people) as a way to dodge the question. "what are you > talking about, idiot, you've totally failed to even bother to release > any product, what a total waster you are, har har, go away little > loser i don't have to answer your question because you are such a > failure" was the general gist of his response. Someone brought up the EOMA68 at the Olimex forums and it is clear from that discussion alone that there is a lot of bad blood between you two: https://www.olimex.com/forum/index.php?topic=4383.msg18469 Frankly, I'm not interested in those kinds of ego clashes and speculated bad intentions. I know you both have made contributions to freedom in digital technology, that I appreciate. This is what I find to matter the most. I am not sure Olimex's boards have shipped with Allwinner's GPL-violating software preinstalled (some of them do not come with NAND). It is regrettable if they did and it would have been much better to avoid that. I think that offering the GPL-violating software for download separately would have been a lesser evil (even though not quite acceptable). Perhaps this is what they did, perhaps not. Either way, I do not need to have an umbrella statement about Olimex as a company. Their products helped the freedom in digital technology front and I'm grateful for that. Perhaps they also did bad things, such as promoting and distributing GPL-violating binaries. But so do a great number of other companies that are also doing good on some aspects and much less on others. This is the case of Google, IBM and many other. I think such general considerations are only relevants to evaluate whether an individual or a company is dedicated to helping us solve digital technology freedom issues, or is only doing it sporadically. In that case, you may conclude that Olimex falls in the latter position. I'm personally not quite sure about it, but I do agree that shipping Allwinner's GPL-violating software is a drawback in that regard. However, as I've mentioned before, I know first hand that Olimex has been supportive of the linux-sunxi community (when many, many other Allwinner board vendors barely acknowledges it). > > > ?from shipping > > > GPL-violating A10 bootloaders and kernels provided by Allwinner, back > > > around 2011/2012? > > > > Olimex has always been about producing community-friendly boards, not about > > the > > software. Nevertheless, Olimex has been involved with the linux-sunxi > > community > > from the early days > > ?paul: you may not be aware that the linux-sunxi community formed > around the arm-netbook mailing list and resources.??the people using > the resources that i set up decided to *create* the sunxi mailing list > and wiki and to form their own community. I have to admit that had skipped my mind when writing those previous emails. I do recall that linux-sunxi was initially started on the arm-netbook mailing list. And indeed, I also recall seeing your name around for a long time. > > and has always been very supportive, by providing developers > > with hardware to work on, taking part in the community, etc. > > that doesn't change the fact that the very early boards with the A10 > processor were shipped by default with allwinner's original > GPL-violating bootloader, u-boot and linux kernel.??now, the GPL is > very very clear: on request you must supply the *EXACT* source and > *EXACT* tools used to compile the *EXACT* binaries that were shipped. That's making an umbrella statement about Olimex, which I don't think is very relevant. There's good and there's bad there. > if you can't do that, you MUST cease and desist distribution.???if > you do not cease and desist distribution, you are no longer in > compliance with the license.??if you are no longer in compliance with > the license but CONTINUE to distribute GPL code (without a license), > *that* is criminal infringement. > > and if a company is in criminal infringement of copyright law, the > company is no longer operating as a company but is in fact an > organised crime syndicate: a criminal cartel. I have to say, this sounds over-exaggerated to me. In French, the word "crime" only refers to the most serious offenses. But Wikipedia apparently states that crime is not so precisely defined in English. Oh well. Still, I don't really see a need for pointing fingers this way. Stating that the distribute GPL-violating software is the informative thing to do. I don't see the point of getting personal about the company with harsh considerations (however technically correct these considerations may be). It also feels like an attempt to discredit Olimex, to be honest. I believe all parties would be better of without that kind of heat, by staying factual and informative. Also, let's not forget that Allwinner's the culprit for all this mess in the first place. Olimex may has been a distributor of it, which may be the same from the copyright law's standpoint, but I think it makes a big difference. You may, of course, disagree with these personal views. > > Also, when they started with Allwinner, mainline software > > wasn't an option. > > ?that's no excuse, paul. > > ?you're aware that it was me who released the very first allwinner > u-boot and linux kernel sources, for the a10???i obtained them from > allwinner and immediately made them available on git.rhombus-tech.net. > tom cubie, who was an allwinner employee at the time, bought some Mele > A1000s and, in a very enterprising spirit, sold them as $50 developer > boards from his aliexpress account.??from there he went on to develop > his own company, made the first cubieboard and began selling it. Then you were, in fact, in the same position of distributing GPL-violating binaries. Unless you stripped them off off that release? I think this makes you understand the kind of tricky position this leads to. People need those GPL-violating binaries (for some of them, for direct use, for others, to do reverse engineering), so I wouldn't send the first stone to the distributor, but to the company that caused the problem in the first place. So nobody wants to distribute them, but people need them. I'm really not sure what the right thing to do here. And frankly, if everyone had stayed away from it with a ten-feet-pole, we wouldn't be here today. > > Better yet, the latest one (A64) was designed with KiCad, so those design > > sources can even be handled with free software! This is an unprecedented > > achievement that even the EOMA68 project has not reached (yet). > > ?there's a reason for that: i'm not an electronics engineer (and KiCAD > simply wasn't ready for use).???five years ago i asked on the > arm-netbook mailing list if anybody would like to help out, in return > for profit-sharing in the end result.??due to some "deliberate" > misunderstandings (which are still going around the internet) various > people saw my offer as a "demand" instead of what it genuinely was: an > offer to share in the profits.??i won't go into details. You don't need to. Those are past stories, I'm rather interested in the state of things as they are now. > ?so, i began to try to use KiCAD myself (see > http://git.rhombus-tech.net/?p=eoma.git).??it didn't go very well. > there were some severe bugs in KiCAD (that have still yet to be fixed) > that make using KiCAD for such large BGA ICs a near impossibility: i > had to hand-edit the library parts.??when it came to actually doing > the PCBs the lack of professional-level features met head-long with my > lack of knowledge of electronics CAD design and i began to realise > very very quickly that i was completely out of my depth. Of course, I'm not surprised. And I know that Olimex was only able to use KiCad for such a complex project at the cost of lots of efforts, bugreports, etc. But I'm really glad that they did and this is the kind of extra step that makes me believe Olimex and Tsvetan are not only there to collect money but actually want to push things forward on the freedom-in-technology front. > rather than end up spending time (and money) doing iterative PCB > design (which could be a bottomless pit) i made a number of other > efforts to invite other people to profit-share in the planned project > scope, but in the end these also fell through and i had to teach > myself electronics CAD design.??with no experience in this field i was > forced into the position of first paying people to do CAD designs for > me, and then later when there wasn't a financial budget available, > learning and using the professional CAD software that we'd paid those > people to develop the designs in. > ?now, EOMA68 succeeds in the engineering arena by making it simpler > for people to update sophisticated products at a fraction of the cost > of other "monolithic" designs.??a "monolithic" design is typically a > minimum of a 4-layer PCB to cover the SoC and the DDR3 RAM.??if > there's a 64-bit RAM path you are usually looking at a 6-layer or > 8-layer PCB.??that's *expensive* territory: $700 for QTY 5 PCBs, $400 > for components, and $600 for assembly.??make a single mistake and it's > another $1800 and another 4-6 weeks turnaround. > > and at the end of all that effort, you're "on the clock" as to the > usefulness of the product, because the key part - the processor - is > going to be superceded very very quickly.??with specialist > vendor-lockin on the various interfaces you're even *more* on the > hook, especially if the fabless semi company doing the SoC doesn't > "grok" libre principles and releases GPL-violating android-only > binaries. This is interesting background (I'm quite familiar with it, but others may not be, so it'll probably help them realize what a task designing that kind of circuit board can be). Thanks for sharing it. > ?now, what if there were "modules" which you knew complied to a simple > interface that you could just get off-the-shelf, even from Best Buy or > Walmart, and could make a simply 2-layer PCB around it???that would be > amazing, wouldn't it? I'm not sure this would solve the multi-layer requirement. Also, a standard interface does have drawback, as it limits the possible number of interfaces exported by the SoC board. > ?what would be even better would be if there were plenty of example > schematics and PCB designs around that you could work from, that were > simple 2-layer PCBs that you could pay china or eastern european > companies to make with a 48-hour turnaround at the fraction of the > cost of 4+ layer PCBs???it would be *even better* if those reference > designs were available as gEDA or KiCAD designs, wouldn't it? Yeah, definitely. We're still a long way from that being a reality comparable to what it is with software, but we're getting there :) > ?so this is why i started that KiCAD-based set of designs back in > 2011... unfortunately i haven't had time to come back and revisit > them.??i understand from joe micha that KiCAD has a "Gerber Import" > feature, so it *should* be possible to import (and recreate) KiCAD GPL > compliant sources from pretty much any proprietary CAD package, with > quite a bit of work.??i hear also that there are some proprietary > importers... it's complicated, hazardous, but doable. I wouldn't expect those kinds of automatic imports to be 100% reliable, especially for complex designs though. But it's great that it's there. > ?all of these things i haven't got time to do immediately, myself, but > it is definitely part of the vision - it always was.??i've not been > talking much online about these things because i've had to focus > instead on "getting it done".??bringing the project out of that > critical "vapourware" barrier... but sticking to That's great to hear! > > Get https://github.com/OLIMEX/OLINUXINO/tree/master/HARDWARE/A64-OLinuXino/A > > 64-O > > linuXino_Rev_A and open it up with KiCad if you wish to see for yourself! > > when the A64 doesn't require a proprietary bootloader, i'll start the > evaluation process again.??however given that the A64 is a 40nm IC and > the Cortex A53 is 15% more power-hungry performance-watt-wise than a > Cortex A7 *and* it's limited to 2GB RAM as a hard limit, i'm much more > inclined to go with a quad-core Cortex A7 instead, or an 8-core 28nm > (or both). Whatever suits you best! But why stick to Allwinner platforms? Rockchip platforms such as RK3288 (and possibly the upcoming RK3399) do just as well in terms of software freedom. I guess you've also considered the i.MX6. GPU support is being reviewed upstream as we speak. Tegra K1 is also really nice, but perhaps more power-hungry. Is this really an issue for a non-mobile device though? > ?currently "in the slot" for evaluation is the Samsung/Nexell S5P6818 > and the Allwinner R40.??both of those are an improvement over the A64. > the S5P6818 is a 28nm octa-core A53 so is power-equivalent to the R40 > (40-28nm is a 2x power improvement, but it's double the number of > cores so roughly back up to the same power usage).??we don't yet know > what geometry the R40 is, but if we assume it's 40nm then it will be > at least 15% more power-efficient than the A64. By the way, I'd be very interested in your notes and conclusions when evaluating platforms! > ?basically it's highly likely that i'll skip the A64 entirely. Well, I guess it depends on your timeline. Perhaps free software support won't be ready in time for the next generation of your products. Or maybe it's not that interesting on the technical side either. > > I think his contribution to freedom in digital > > technology has been solid and significant. > > The devices he's producing show as much. > > ?given that he's released the designs of a number of products - > libre-licensed full SCH and PCB files which i wasn't aware of before - > i have to agree with you.??but be under absolutely no illusion that > it's all "roses".??he's prepared to compromise on ethics (because he > doesn't understand their importance - as in he *genuinely* doesn't > understand it).???he'd rather take your money. I hear?you. > > > also, the A64's processor - which tsvetan is using for the olimex > > > laptop - requires a proprietary early-bootloader.??in fact, the first > > > A64 SDK that came out was an absolute mess, comprising several GPL > > > violations in both the early-bootloader, the u-boot source *and* the > > > linux kernel.??the SDK was even exclusively distributed over a chinese > > > illegal filesharing network (this is an "official" released SDK from > > > allwinner!) > > > > Of course, we all know that, but that's how you move forward! We can't just > > wait > > for the situation to be magically resolved before considering producing > > hardware > > with it, and staying away from it with a teen-feet-pole before. > > ?true. > > > > > Simply because > > no change will ensue of that. Olimex has the ability to create boards early- > > on, > > that will encourage the community to work on this chip, and also create > > leverage > > with Allwinner. > > ?ok.??right.??are you familiar with the story behind the Allwinner R8 > "NextThingCo" "CHIP" computer???that was going to be a GPL-violating > product until some people on the crowd-funding campaign pointed out > that it would be a bit of a problem for a USA-based company to be > importing copyright-violating product. Hehe, yeah I'm aware of it. > ?so, NextThingCo had a rather urgent meeting with Allwinner (one of > the team worked for them so knew who to call), and basically "put > their foot down".??they said, in effect, "give us the source, or you > don't get the order.??oh... and we have 50,000 orders". > > ?end result???allwinner's R-Series team is now scrambling to get fully > GPL-compliant source code out the door (and i am arranging to go over > to the main office in Zhuhai in a few days time to help them out). I didn't know about those details. I'm really glad you're helping with this, too. > ?*THIS* is what both Pine64 and Tsvetan *SHOULD* have done with the > A64. they should have said, "give us the source, or you don't get our > money".??it's only 200 lines of code in this case: libdram is mostly > identical in all versions, there's one main function (the DDR3 > initialisation). > > ?because they *didn't* put their foot down when it mattered, the sunxi > community is now forced to reverse-engineer libdram. That's an interesting perspective. It would be interesting to bring it up with those companies to see what they have tried or why they didn't try to take that stand. > ?these kinds of compromises when it matters are *VITAL* lost > opportunities.... I would tend to agree with you on this one. Hardware manufacturers have leverage in those situations, so it's sad that they don't use it. > all because people like Tsvetan and the team at > Pine64 prefer to take your money. There's probably a wide range of possible explanations for this. It's not certain that these companies' volumes matter. But either way, I'd be interested in starting that discussion to see where each actor stands on this. > > So it's really not about what the situation is right now, but about what it > > can > > possibly become. Allwinner chips have *always* been a mess to deal with at > > first, but efforts from companies like Olimex and the community made it > > possible > > to have the kind of support we know today for chips like the A20. > > ?paul, i reiterate here: the sunxi community exists because of my > early efforts :)??i *am* aware of the sunxi community's work since > then: i've been an indirect contributor myself (i did the > reverse-engineering of USB-FEL that allowed the sunxi-tools fel-boot > program to be completed - i used usbmon from outside of a qemu session > running LIVESUIT.EXE to sniff the usb traffic). Great to hear and sorry for implying it was not the case. > > Also bear in mind that you were able to get the EOMA68 together, with that > > level > > of free software support, in part thanks to people like Tsvetan who put > > together > > (free hardware) boards for the community to work on those chips and > > supported > > their efforts early on, when the situation is indeed a mess. > > ?this isn't historically accurate: back in 2010, 2011 it was my first > release of the A10 u-boot and kernel source, and the rhombus-tech > wiki, arm-netbook mailing list and irc channel, using the Mele A1000 > and then tom cubie's cubieboards that allowed the sunxi community to > first form: tsvetan's boards came out at least a year later (i think) > than the first cubieboard.??*later* boards - around... probably > something like.... 2012: *then* yes, you are correct. Same here, sorry for not connecting the dots earlier. I'm now under no impression that you just waited idle and got your product out after others did the work for you. > > > over a considerable period of time, pine64 and the sunxi community > > > worked to eliminate as many of those GPL violations as they could, but > > > Allwinner insisted on keeping the early-bootloader proprietary. > > > > > > so at present the A64 is classified as a "non-libre" processor.??that > > > it's the basis of the olimex laptop tells you everything you need to > > > know. > > > > Again, you're looking at the situation right now, which indeed matches what > > you > > describe. However, I think Olimex sees a lot of potential in A64 and so do > > I. > > Only time will tell whether it was a dead-end or not. > > > > > > > > now, whilst tsevtan is making money selling you hardware that requires > > > non-free components to operate basic functions, i've put my foot down > > > and said NO, i will NOT sell GPL-violating product.??i don't care if > > > that means it's harder to deliver ethical products, i'll deal with > > > that on an ongoing basis, but here's the thing: it means i've > > > established a reputation for setting some ethical rules *AND STUCK TO > > > THEM*. > > > > Frankly, I don't care that a device doesn't work with free software right > > now if > > it has potential to be liberated eventually > > ?this is an extremely exhausting approach that burdens the entire > sunxi community with a hell of a lot of unpaid work.... and will > result in each and every processor being *years* behind.??if it takes > 2 years to complete the reverse-engineering, that's an *entire > generation* behind!??look at how long it took to get the full source > together for the A20!??in the meantime the A33, A31, A83 *and* the A64 > came out! It may not be the most efficient strategy, but I'm saying that it's something. The situation is much worse on a number of other platforms, where we have no friendly circuit board manufacturer at all. > ?as a community we simply cannot be expected to shoulder the burden of > responsibility for clearing up Allwinner's mess, only to be "rewarded" > with having to tolerate being at least *TWO YEARS* behind the times in > terms of what processors are available for us to use in libre > projects!??that's completely insane! > > ?no.??i REJECT that approach. Again, I'm not saying it's optimal and good as it is. But it's something and has lead to results (that were, indeed delayed by years due to the technical burden that Allwinner induced by requiring the community to do reverse engineering). But considering the size of the task, I think the community has done an amazing job here. > > But of course, Olimex and you are not in the same position. > > ?it's much more than that.??i'm first and foremost a software libre > engineer and advocate.??i place libre principles FIRST.??i do NOT > place "making money" first and foremost.??i choose NOT to compromise > on software freedom. > > ?and i also choose to FIND WAYS to GET software freedom and to create > an ethical business. > > ?so it's not that we are not "in the same position", it's that we > operate *FROM* totally different positions.??Tsvetan (and pine64, and > numerous china-based OEMs) operate from the basis of "money first, > software freedom second". Again, I'm not sure I fully share your stand on Olimex, but I sure am glad to see read this about the way you're conducting your effort. I am grateful there are people like you around. > > > > I agree that you went steps further than most before, but this is > > > > incremental improvement, not something truly new and groundbreaking > > > > compared > > > > to > > > > what existed before. > > > > > > ?hmmm, an interesting perspective, which i feel may be based on not > > > being aware of the sheer overwhelming number of issues being tackled > > > (all at once). > > > > > > ?yes it's "incremental improvement" but it's a MASSIVE stack of > > > MULTIPLE "incremental improvements", all done at once. > > > > From what I can see, the actual improvements (again, from the digital > > technology > > side of things, so I'm not including the mechanical design) come down to not > > including a Wi-Fi chip that requires proprietary software in a laptop > > design, > > which is what had been lacking from the ARM Chromebooks. If you see anything > > else, please state it clearly. > > there's too much to cover, paul.??i'm not saying that lightly: the > fact that the ecocomputing whitepaper is seventeen *thousand* words > long is testament to that.??it's not even specifically about the > actual *hardware*: the actual hardware specs is just a "response" (if > you will) to the systemic approach that i've taken, after doing an > extremely comprehensive analysis of the entire computing industry.??if > you start with the whitepaper you'll begin to get a feel for what > EOMA68 is really about. > http://rhombus-tech.net/whitepapers/ecocomputing_07sep2015/ That's probably a fascinating read, but you're again talking about an approach here, not technical differences that matter from the perspective of freedom in technology, about the product you're releasing now. This is the specific aspect I wanted to highlight and get feedback on, not your general attitude. > ?the crowdfunding campaign was - is - just the beginning of emerging > from an extremely intense period of work, learning an entirely new > field (hardware design) in order to be in a position to influence an > entire industry and turn it away from the entropic field of > "proprietary software / hardware because it's cheaper".??reality is: > it *isn't* cheaper (long-term). I realize that, I have actually been following your work from a distance for some time and I'm glad it finally got concrete. > > There are also rare occurences in your design, meaning that only few > > products > > before (such as the ARM Chromebooks or the Novena) had reached that level of > > support, such as: using a SoC that has few freedom flaws (GPU), having a > > free > > software keyboard controller. We could also add free hardware design there > > (but > > I'm still a bit confused about what the situation actually is and didn't > > take > > the time to look it up properly). > > ?dr stallman and i have been talking about this (privately).??the > terms "open hardware", "open source hardware" and "libre hardware" are > *all* very misleading, because "hardware" could mean *anything*.??it > could be spoons, it could be heavy machinery, it could be casework, it > could be PCBs, it could be ASICs (actual silicon ICs). > > ?so the whole episode (this thread) comes back to all of us (as a > community) using a rather thoroughly ambiguous term.??if we want to be > clear, we should be using the words "libre PCB designs", "libre > casework designs" and so on - *not* "libre hardware".??it's way too > general. I believe the PCB design is the source form of the technology. Printed circuit boards are the product form and the technology itself can be referred to as "circuit boards". Just like software (form of technology) has source code (source form) and binaries (product form). We can distinguish that from Integrated chips, another aspects of digital technology. I will be (and have been) using this specific terminology. I rarely talk about "free hardware" in general (and even less ?so about "open hardware'. However, this confusion is very common, so it's good to bring it up. > > If you feel like I'm missing something substantial, please let me know. > > ?you're missing an entire five years of work - the entire rhombus-tech > initiative - which has run in parallel in the background side-by-side > with the sunxi community efforts.??i've stayed off of the sunxi > resources because they're using nonfree infrastructure.??sunxi mailing > list: runs off the non-free google groups.??sunxi git repositories: > runs off the non-free github repositories.??the key developers know me > (because they were originally members of the arm-netbook mailing > list), and we do occasionally talk (in private email) - but most > people who use the sunxi mailing list don't even know that i exist. Again, these are not the aspects I'm commenting about. > > > ?*nobody* has tried to do that before.??not Dell, not Olimex, not IBM > > > - *nobody*. > > > > > > ?for example you compare the EOMA68 Housing to the olimex laptop.??the > > > olimex laptop's casework is proprietary (the EOMA68 Housing's is > > > GPLv3+ libre-licensed).??so automatically you can see that it's > > > nowhere near being a legitimate comparison. > > > > Again, my point is about digital technology here, not mechanical parts. > > ?i'm lost, sorry.??i don't quite follow what the term "digital > technology" refers to, but you use the term again below so i think i > might have been able to deduce what you mean from context... correct > me if i'm wrong. Digital technology refers to digital electronic technology, which includes software, hardware configuration, circuit boards and integrated circuits. Case design and mechanical parts don't fall into that scope. > > > > > The issue is your looking at one thing. A few specs. It's not the > > > > > specs? > > > > > that matter. It's the standard, it's the modularization, it's the? > > > > > response and cooperation we are getting already as a result of our? > > > > > actions here, etc. Intel and AMD are not going to cooperate and > > > > > building? > > > > > off of other companies products (higher up the chain) is not a > > > > > reliable? > > > > > long term solution. > > > > > > > > Again, I don't see how modularization changes anything here. > > > > > > ?you can't focus on just the one aspect and conclude that "it's not > > > significant".??bear in mind that this has been a 5 year project, where > > > i've had 15 years of working near-exclusively with software libre, > > > looking at the endemic and systemic problems and coming up with a > > > *long-term* strategy to tackle *all* of the issues associated with the > > > consequences of proprietary computing... *all at once*. > > > > > > ?modularisation (and having open standards despite what the > > > wikipedia-page-that's-already-scheduled-for-deletion would have you > > > believe) is one - *one* - critical - *critical* part of that strategy. > > > > Again, everything you can do with modularization you could do by producing > > new > > versions of boards. > > ?no, you can't.??read the ecocomputing whitepaper [and scan back up > several paragraphs] I probably will then, I find the subject quite interesting anyway. > > It solves the environmental problem and is convenient to > > users, but has little to do with freedom in digital technology. > > ?you're correct here (and this is why i said that you're missing the > point by focussing exclusively on *one* aspect). Well, what I asked was what I was missing about digital technology freedom aspects, not what other aspects I was missing. I'm well aware that your project comes with a much broader approach, that you have described a bit already throughout this conversation. > ??so if you *only* > focus on the modularity, you'll be completely lost and won't > understand. > > ?what is needed is to have modularity... *AND* commit to software > libre ethical principles.??making this clear is extremely hard to do. > even the fact that i've just added a DRM section (it's banned) to the > EOMA68 standard *still* doesn't really get the full message across. > > > If you have > > actual specific point to counter those points (other than vague statements > > like > > "part of a strategy"), I'd be happy to react to them. > > ?it's complicated, paul, and i'll be absolutely honest with you: i'm > *working out* how to get it across, what i'm doing and why.??*five > years* and i still haven't been able to put what i'm doing into a > simple clear statement... because of the sheer overwhelming depth and > scale of what i'm attempting to do.??it's so ambitious and audacious > that when i start explain it, many people react with total disbelief, > calling me "arrogant", "deluded" and many many other things which goes > a long, long way to explaining the rather vehement reactions that you > will see evidence of (if you look carefully enough). > > ?so if you can promise *not* to react in the same way, i'll make an > effort to explain.??deal? Again, I think you're misunderstand what I'm asking here. I'm not asking about the approach (but feel free to provide a comprehensive introduction to it, I feel it is quite interesting). I'm talking about the specific level of support of the products you're releasing now in regard to freedom in digital technology. Also, I can guess how vast your effort is and how much work it represents. This most certainly naturally explains why it took such a long time to actually get something concrete produced from all these ideas. And frankly, I'm not one to make personal attacks, so I don't think you have to fear that sort of reaction from me :) > > > > Hardware availability has never been the problem. > > > > > > ?libre hardware availability has *always* been a problem.??entropy > > > guarantees that it always will.??you actually have to make a concerted > > > continuous effort to push back against the corner-cost-cutting of the > > > mass-volume industry. > > > > So if we're talking about free hardware projects, then I'll agree that the > > situation hasn't been that great. As far as I know, only Olimex, Novena and > > a > > few others have been producing free hardware computers that work well with > > free > > software. > > > > But again, I'm still confused about the hardware freedom situation of your > > device. The most meaningful part is, of course, the EOMA68 board with the > > A20, > > not the carriers (even though having them as free hardware is very nice). > > ?as i have the right (under the GPL) to release the CAD designs when i > actually ship, that's what i'll be doing.??if i release the designs > *right now*, there's the severe risk that somebody may take the > designs and manufacture them *in advance* of me fulfilling my > committment to the backers of the campaign. Of course, you don't have to do anything until your products go live anyway! > ?i *specifically state* - very very clearly - right there on the > crowdfunding campaign page - that this is why i will not be > IMMEDIATELY releasing the EOMA68-A20 CAD designs. > > ?and i *specifically state* that *everything else* is made available in > advance. > > ?this fits closely with the EOMA68 strategy from an engineering > perspective, because the "computer" bit is not something that you > should be manufacturing in small volumes anyway: the whole point is > that if people group together to do "bulk buys" of EOMA68-XXX > computing modules, everybody benefits from mass-volume bulk volume > pricing whilst being at liberty to design and manufacture much simpler > "Housings" using only 2-layer boards. Okay. > > On the other hand, the availability of boards that have components that work > > well with free software have never been a problem, there's not discussion to > > have here. > > > > > > > > > > > > > For laptops, we only had minor > > > > annoyances,?like Wi-Fi chips that require proprietary firmwares, > > > > > > ?proprietary firmware for WIFI is a bit more than a "minor" annoyance, > > > paul! > > > > That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that there are easy and nearly > > painless > > ways to solve these problems, by using external ath9k_htc USB dongles. > > ?you're aware that my sponsor, chris from thinkpenguin, was > responsible for bringing us the ath9k_htc libre firmware???that > chris's business model is founded around exactly the same ethical > committment to libre principles as are behind the EOMA68 initiative is > a big, big clue :) Yes, I am well aware! Such a great thing to have. It has severely alleviated the pain associated with Wi-Fi. > > > ?no, paul, what you're missing here is that there's an *active > > > committment* to tackling the pain, cost burden and inconvenience that > > > proprietary software (and hardware) causes. > > > > Well, I have been talking about the freedom situation in digital technology > > all > > along, not commitment. I do agree that commitment such as the one displayed > > with > > your project is a rare thing. > > ?i'm prepared to prioritise libre principles over profit maximising, > that's all there is to it.??the interesting side-effect of that is > that i've had to get *really* creative about how to fulfil the goal > [of bringing libre principles to mass-volume products]. > > > > And that is indeed groundbreaking (even though > > projects like the Novena were here before), > > ?you _are_ aware that the EOMA68 initiative _pre-dates_ the Novena, right? :) True, they just got it shipping faster (Bunnie is quite used to EE and the Chinese circuit-board-making ecosystem, so that must have been a great help). > > because that kind of intent is > > clearly lacking from e.g. companies producing Chromebooks, so it rather > > feels > > like we got lucky (or that people inside these companies care a lot, but it > > doesn't reflect in the company's PR). > > ?yeah.??i think now that chromebooks are out of the "R&D" phase (where > they began solely as a google initiative) and are now seen as an > actual profitable thing to "copy", we now see third party companies > independently designing chromebooks *without* the assistance or > involvement of google-sponsored engineering... Really? I haven't seen any such example, and I'm not sure that Google will allow any company to do this under the ChromeOS brand name. But I'm all ears for details :) > ?... and that's where you end up with the cost-cutting exercises such > as "using SD/MMC soldered-down SIP modules onto the main PCB which > require proprietary firmware" Well, they have been using eMMC modules on ARM devices because most of them don't have SATA or PCI-e interfaces. But I seem to recall that earlier x86 Chromebooks did use SATA disks. This is anyway a very common practice on those kinds of devices. And any MMC card (soldered or not), just like any USB storage key, comes with a proprietary firmware. > now, here's where it gets interesting, because if you create an EOMA68 > chrome OS computer card, libre compliance is pretty much a "hard > requirement"... because if it's not, chances are quite high that that > EOMA68 ChromeOS Card *won't work* in Housings that require proprietary > firmware. > > ?why is that? > > ?it's because you can't predict what peripherals future Housings will > have... so you have to always upgrade the OS on the Computer Card (so > that it's always compatible with the latest and greatest Housings and > any newer peripherals that might be in them).... now you have to > include *all* the bits of firmware that you can possibly get your > hands on, and if those are non-free proprietary WIFI firmware blobs, > now it gets really complicated.??but if they're *libre* firmware, it's > a hell of a lot easier. From a technical perspective, I don't think this has been a drawback for ChromeOS devices. And they're continuously updating the system, too. > ?i really must put this as an "advisory" on the EOMA68 standard.... > another thing for the TODO list... > > > Commitment is important for the long run, so I'm really glad you're around. > > We > > can't just rely on sheer luck to get devices that do well with free software > > from mainstream manufacturers, even though we've had good luck a great > > number of > > times already (and bad luck an astonishingly greater number of times, too). > > ?yyyeah... i learned recently that the latest chromebooks have > integrated WIFI (with proprietary firmware... argh) whereas previously > they had WIFI-as-a-USB-based-module-over-a-four-wire-cable). > cost-cutting exercises are clearly beginning to creep into chromebook > designs.... oops. Again, not sure it's that. SDIO Wi-Fi modules have been really common all along. And either way, it would be hard to replace them as everything's soldered together. As long as we can use an external Wi-Fi dongle that runs with a free firmware, I think we're good. This is why I don't focus on the Wi-Fi part that much. Other aspects such as GPU support are a clearly much bigger task to tackle. > > > ?.... it's a vicious self-sustaining cycle that has to be broken by an > > > *active* committment. > > > > Definitely, that's a (if not the only) reliable (but harder and perhaps more > > dangerous) way to achieve progress for freedom in digital technology. Going > > with > > luck has worked well in some areas (again, ARM Chromebooks), but we knows > > when > > our luck will turn. > > ?yeahyeah.??it's why "businesses" (corporations) will never be trusted > to deliver (even at their own long-term expense), because they have to > prioritise "profit" above all else.??USB-based WIFI dongles ($3) are > *always* going to be more expensive than soldered-down SD/MMC-based > SIP "modules" ($1.50)... Either way, I agree we can't expect them to always make the choices that will benefit freedom first. > > Even though this conversation may have taken a harsh tone at times and > > places, I > > do believe we share the same views and only disagree on details (which fill > > up > > most of our discussions here). I hope this is clear and this discussion > > doesn't > > come across as a strong attack against what you're doing! > > ?not at all.??it's through these kinds of conversations that i'll be > able to clarify what the hell it is that i've been up to for five > years. Glad that we're good on that :) And yeah, I guess having to explain things makes it a lot easier to present them clearly afterward. Cheers, -- Paul Kocialkowski, developer of low-level free software for embedded devices Website: https://www.paulk.fr/ Coding blog: https://code.paulk.fr/ Git repositories: https://git.paulk.fr/ https://git.code.paulk.fr/ -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 801 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part URL: From lovell.joshyyy at gmail.com Wed Sep 14 09:07:21 2016 From: lovell.joshyyy at gmail.com (Josh Branning) Date: Wed, 14 Sep 2016 10:07:21 +0100 Subject: [Dev] [libreplanet-discuss] EOMA68 and freedom in digital technology In-Reply-To: References: <57D467FC.7070800@gmail.com> Message-ID: <57D91349.1030308@gmail.com> On 14/09/16 01:07, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote: > --- > crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68 > > > On Sat, Sep 10, 2016 at 9:07 PM, Josh Branning wrote: >> On 10/09/16 20:38, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote: >>>> >>>> See what Olimex has been doing for years then. >>> >>> >>> you're aware that olimex operates as a criminal cartel, from shipping >>> GPL-violating A10 bootloaders and kernels provided by Allwinner, back >>> around 2011/2012? you're also aware that with the sole exception of >>> the olimex laptop's PCBs the only thing that they provide is >>> auto-generated PDFs *from* the schematics source code... not the >>> actual schematics and certainly not the PCB design files? >> >> >> I think this is a little unfair to Olimex and is at least partially untrue. >> For instance, schematics and pcb files CAN be found, for most of their >> boards. [1] > > yes - you're catching up (three people kindly pointed this out) > >> Unlike your boards, which give a 404 forbidden message when trying to access >> the server. [2] Hopefully this is something you can correct. > > it has. explained also in other posts since you replied to this. > >> Though I can see that the advantage over the Olimex boards is that you ship >> with a libre operating system from the start. > > which gives you a clear message: i will *not* compromise on software > freedom for the purposes of profit maximisation. actually it's more > specific than that: i will NOT put designs into people's hands when i > know that they will become distressed as a result (due to viruses > emptying their bank accounts, or being forced to spend money on > throwing away perfectly good hardware due to software driver > incompatibility and so on). > > >> In regards to the A64 (used in the Olimex laptop), /mainline/ u-boot, from >> the sunxi.org wiki [3]: > > u-boot is not the early bootloader. the early bootloader is proprietary. > >> ' Basic support for the A64 SoC has been been merged into 2016.05-rc1. >> This covers UART, MMC and required GPIOs and clocks, but no Ethernet or USB >> yet. Also as there is no information on the DRAM controller so far, the SPL >> support is not enabled, so boot0 is required at the moment to get U-Boot >> loaded. > > ... and is that early bootloader, boot0, proprietary or not, yes or no? > >> Also, I think that the Olimex laptop has not yet been released, so that >> gives developers time to build more support, before they start selling. > > meanwhile, the opportunity has been totally lost, to put a financial > "foot down" (just as with NextThingCo did with Allwinner over the R8) > i.e. to say "no, allwinner, we will *not* place an order for 50,000 > units with you *UNTIL* you give us the full source code including the > full source code of the early bootloader, boot0" > > now the sunxi community is expected to pick up the pieces - unpaid - > and to clean up allwinner's mess. oh, but worse than that, the team > behind the Allwinner A64 think it's *OKAY* to consider boot0 to be > proprietary! > > just because pine64 and olimex took your money instead of setting > software freedom as a first priority. > > tell me: how is that okay? if you *really think* it is okay, explain how. > > l. > Getting rid of boot0 is not far away: http://git.denx.de/?p=u-boot/u-boot-sunxi.git;a=tree;f=board/sunxi;h=6419936f8b204d43c146ff5d8c88d1b0484fdcae;hb=refs/heads/next I'm sure, and there is some evidence that Olimex puts pressure as it is on Allwinner to release their code and stop ignoring GPL licensing conditions. You say Olimex made a GPL-violation and then basically made the fool of you 'in-front of 20,000 people', but they seem otherwise. [1] According to them, you were complaining that they hadn't released the source early enough, because they hadn't written a tutorial of how to build as soon as they released the images. Though I guess it is unclear as to what actually happened back then. (lists.gpl-violations.org is down). Either way, it doesn't really matter much, I appreciate what you're doing, making another libre computer, and for that I am grateful. I'm also pleased you posted the schematics and pcb files as you said you would. Thanks again, Josh [1] http://mail.olimex.com/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=kvhculms6ai4jjuiti1ija7fq5&topic=2278.msg10034#msg10034 From lkcl at lkcl.net Wed Sep 14 10:34:15 2016 From: lkcl at lkcl.net (Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton) Date: Wed, 14 Sep 2016 11:34:15 +0100 Subject: [Dev] [libreplanet-discuss] EOMA68 and freedom in digital technology In-Reply-To: <57D91349.1030308@gmail.com> References: <57D467FC.7070800@gmail.com> <57D91349.1030308@gmail.com> Message-ID: --- crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68 On Wed, Sep 14, 2016 at 10:07 AM, Josh Branning wrote: > Getting rid of boot0 is not far away: > > http://git.denx.de/?p=u-boot/u-boot-sunxi.git;a=tree;f=board/sunxi;h=6419936f8b204d43c146ff5d8c88d1b0484fdcae;hb=refs/heads/next i'm not sure why you're referencing this, josh - it > I'm sure, and there is some evidence that Olimex puts pressure as it is on > Allwinner to release their code and stop ignoring GPL licensing conditions. you'll need to be more specific. > You say Olimex made a GPL-violation and then basically made the fool of you > 'in-front of 20,000 people', but they seem otherwise. [1] you'll need to reference archive.org to find the conversation. tsvetan's disdain is very very clear. and he also, just as clearly, doesn't actually answer the question. > According to them, you were complaining that they hadn't released the source > early enough, because they hadn't written a tutorial of how to build as soon > as they released the images. i don't believe it (but i could be wrong - i often am). allwinner hadn't actually released the source of the proprietary boot0 bootloader back then, and things were a total mess. i've yet to reply but paul might actually be right about git.rhombus-tech.net because it might contain (for example) libnand. i *think* on review of the code i did go "i ain't frickin well putting *that* in the git repo" but i'll have to double-check. it was a long time ago. > Though I guess it is unclear as to what > actually happened back then. (lists.gpl-violations.org is down). it's permanently offline after the server was hacked. it won't be restored. > Either way, it doesn't really matter much, I appreciate what you're doing, > making another libre computer, and for that I am grateful. I'm also pleased > you posted the schematics and pcb files as you said you would. various parts already were - have been for many years. l. From nobody at parabola.nu Fri Sep 16 03:27:22 2016 From: nobody at parabola.nu (Parabola Website Notification) Date: Fri, 16 Sep 2016 03:27:22 -0000 Subject: [Dev] Orphan Libre package [linux-libre-grsec] marked out-of-date Message-ID: <20160916032722.10138.7031@parabola.nu> jc_gargma at iserlohn-fortress.net wants to notify you that the following packages may be out-of-date: * linux-libre-grsec 1:4.7.3_gnu.r201609072139-1 [libre] (armv7h): https://parabolagnulinux.org/packages/libre/armv7h/linux-libre-grsec/ * linux-libre-grsec 1:4.7.3_gnu.r201609072139-1 [libre] (i686): https://parabolagnulinux.org/packages/libre/i686/linux-libre-grsec/ * linux-libre-grsec 1:4.7.3_gnu.r201609072139-1 [libre] (x86_64): https://parabolagnulinux.org/packages/libre/x86_64/linux-libre-grsec/ * linux-libre-grsec-docs 1:4.7.3_gnu.r201609072139-1 [libre] (armv7h): https://parabolagnulinux.org/packages/libre/armv7h/linux-libre-grsec-docs/ * linux-libre-grsec-docs 1:4.7.3_gnu.r201609072139-1 [libre] (i686): https://parabolagnulinux.org/packages/libre/i686/linux-libre-grsec-docs/ * linux-libre-grsec-docs 1:4.7.3_gnu.r201609072139-1 [libre] (x86_64): https://parabolagnulinux.org/packages/libre/x86_64/linux-libre-grsec-docs/ * linux-libre-grsec-headers 1:4.7.3_gnu.r201609072139-1 [libre] (armv7h): https://parabolagnulinux.org/packages/libre/armv7h/linux-libre-grsec-headers/ * linux-libre-grsec-headers 1:4.7.3_gnu.r201609072139-1 [libre] (i686): https://parabolagnulinux.org/packages/libre/i686/linux-libre-grsec-headers/ * linux-libre-grsec-headers 1:4.7.3_gnu.r201609072139-1 [libre] (x86_64): https://parabolagnulinux.org/packages/libre/x86_64/linux-libre-grsec-headers/ The user provided the following additional text: Grsecurity has released a patch for 4.7.4 From nobody at parabola.nu Sat Sep 17 20:16:04 2016 From: nobody at parabola.nu (Parabola Website Notification) Date: Sat, 17 Sep 2016 20:16:04 -0000 Subject: [Dev] Orphan Libre package [vim] marked out-of-date Message-ID: <20160917201604.10139.46299@parabola.nu> giorgianb at openmailbox.org wants to notify you that the following packages may be out-of-date: * gvim 7.4.2334-1.parabola1 [libre] (armv7h): https://parabolagnulinux.org/packages/libre/armv7h/gvim/ * gvim 7.4.2334-1.parabola1 [libre] (i686): https://parabolagnulinux.org/packages/libre/i686/gvim/ * gvim 7.4.2334-1.parabola1 [libre] (x86_64): https://parabolagnulinux.org/packages/libre/x86_64/gvim/ * vim 7.4.2334-1.parabola1 [libre] (armv7h): https://parabolagnulinux.org/packages/libre/armv7h/vim/ * vim 7.4.2334-1.parabola1 [libre] (i686): https://parabolagnulinux.org/packages/libre/i686/vim/ * vim 7.4.2334-1.parabola1 [libre] (x86_64): https://parabolagnulinux.org/packages/libre/x86_64/vim/ * vim-runtime 7.4.2334-1.parabola1 [libre] (armv7h): https://parabolagnulinux.org/packages/libre/armv7h/vim-runtime/ * vim-runtime 7.4.2334-1.parabola1 [libre] (i686): https://parabolagnulinux.org/packages/libre/i686/vim-runtime/ * vim-runtime 7.4.2334-1.parabola1 [libre] (x86_64): https://parabolagnulinux.org/packages/libre/x86_64/vim-runtime/ The user provided the following additional text: Vim 8 is released! From chris at thinkpenguin.com Tue Sep 20 08:22:13 2016 From: chris at thinkpenguin.com (Christopher Waid) Date: Tue, 20 Sep 2016 04:22:13 -0400 Subject: [Dev] EOMA68 and freedom in digital technology In-Reply-To: <1473533764.2627.65.camel@paulk.fr> References: <1472034304.1112.26.camel@paulk.fr> <2314eca63a5198f93e0b2ca1f3899201@thinkpenguin.com> <57BDF61A.80107@ceata.org> <1472115690.1110.46.camel@paulk.fr> <40b8ad42c08d47c86d2f972fbde6daa9@thinkpenguin.com> <1473533764.2627.65.camel@paulk.fr> Message-ID: >> I want to make it clear that I don't dislike LibreBoot and I'm not? >> saying it has no value. It's value right now to me is clear. It's >> 100%? >> free software for what is otherwise proprietary. I value that. As we? >> move away from X86 the value in it from a freedom-perspective will? >> diminish as alternatives exist. In that position I would begin to >> think? >> about alternative projects to work on if my primary focus was >> advancing? >> software freedom. > > This is because you are, for some reason, associating Libreboot with > x86. I'm not. I'm saying it's only value to the cause of free'ing hardware if you are doing it on older X86 systems. On non-x86 systems there are other free bootloaders. It's a duplication of work. Even if LibreBoot has functionality it doesn't help the goal of freeing a given system. Within the work I'm concerned about I don't care if LibreBoot makes dozens of systems freer. What I care about is getting *just one* system as free as it can possibly get and be usable/well supported/etc. Those who care about maximizing freedom will hop ship and they will compromise functionality if needed to achieve that freedom. I don't see any reason to utilize LibreBoot over [a free version of] uboot within that context either as it stands now. I'm not intimately familiar with LibreBoot mind you, but from what I understand this is the case. Maybe if there is a feature LibreBoot provided then sure, we'd use it, but from what I've been told there are better alternatives to LibreBoot already from a functionality/size stand point anyway on non-X86 platforms. Obviously it's more complicated than I'm making it out to be here... but at least for what we're currently looking at in terms of maximizing freedom some version of uboot is the way to go. > There > is no particular reason to do this, and I'm working to add support for > ARM > devices in Libreboot. MIPS devices could also be integrated as well. > OpenPOWER > support is also planned to get integrated in Libreboot. I only care about freeing devices, not whether LibreBoot works on something, I don't care how many devices LibreBoot works on. That's not something that matters in my opinion if there is already something else we can utilize. Certainly there will be people who'd rather go with an older system prone to failure that is slightly more powerful and less free and LibreBoot might be the only option in those contexts, but this is limited to X86. All other systems are pretty much problematic that LibreBoot might hope to work on [OpenPower might be an exception if it ever gets off the ground, but how needed it is I don't know, maybe uboot works here too, I just don't know]. If you make it work with stuff where there are not other options then it might become an interesting project from my perspective. >> What I believe will make it valuable to people down the line will be? >> functionality (within the free software community and maybe even? >> beyond). I don't know what this functionality is right now and I >> simply? >> know that it's got value to some use case still. If I had to take an? >> educated guess I'd probably say it has functionality which is useful >> to? >> system administrators in server environments. From what I understand >> of? >> CoreBoot from which LibreBoot is derived that functionality was what >> has? >> in the past spurred CoreBoot's adoption by those outside the free? >> software world. > > I'm not sure extra functionalities are a requirement, but having > something that > works properly probably is. We are working hard to achieve that, on > every aspect > of free software support at the lower levels. However, I truly hope > that we > someday only have to care about adding new features, over getting the > basics to > work. Yea- I'd like to see a time come when functionality is something I have the luxury to worry about. Right now my focus is maximizing freedom. And by that I mean doing whatever is in my power to get devices out there where we don't need proprietary bits. I don't want to be dependent on proprietary keyboard controller or LCD controller or hard disk firmware or CPU micro code or... the list goes on... The bootloader problem is solved in my mind already so getting LibreBoot working on non-X86 systems just doesn't matter to me. It may matter to others, but not to me. > >> If servers were a high priority for us (they aren't) I'd probably be? >> pushing/sponsoring LibreBoot. I was the first person to suggest? >> LibreBoot add a donation option. Right now our focus is on laptops,? >> desktops, and typical end-user hardware. I want to see GNU/Linux and? >> free software adopted by the masses. It's largely won in the server? >> arena and there is a huge market opportunity here for free software? >> servers to anyone who wished to pursue it. > > Well, I don't like the idea to narrow our efforts to specific use cases > or types > of users. Different people and entities have different needs. Some do > need to > use servers. Frankly, I'd rather try and support every aspect of > digital > technology out there rather than voluntarily restrict the scope of what > should > be worked on. Well, I think you have to narrow your efforts at first. Even with LibreBoot you started with narrower efforts and expanded outward. It wasn't the case that LibreBoot supported non-X86 at first. That came later. In my situation we're not focused on a bootloader. We're focused on the bigger picture so once that bootloader is done it doesn't matter if it only works on select systems because those select systems are going to provide the maximum freedom possible. I'd rather move on to other components, like wifi chipsets, or graphics components that we may not be able to utilize with free software or the systems may not have. > And anyway, there isn't so much stuff we actually have the ability to > free, so I > think this is what drives what we can actually do to the largest > extent. Also, > given the best-effort nature of all this, I think people tend to work > on what > they personally like/need, and I think this is fine. Absolutely. If you don't have the skills/interest to focus on the other stuff your best to focus on the stuff you do have the skills to solve. What I have tried to say to certain other people working on LibreBoot in the past was I think your/these types of skills can be better put to use working on similar types of projects for which no one else is working on. This is what I would do, but I have an interest in such a device, maybe not everyone else does with these skills. The example I gave is a GPS navigation device. It would seem one who has the skills to work on a project like LibreBoot would also be able to work on a free GPS navigation device. > > This is, of course, assuming a community approach and already existing > devices. > Your approach, which is about producing devices, is indeed quite > different and > you probably need to target an audience there. But then again, I'm > happy to see > that different companies are working on liberating different areas of > digital > technology by producing devices for that purpose. > > You pick what seems to make the most sense to you, others will pick > something > else and if enough people do that, we may just cover a large part of > the > spectrum! Yup- and I'm trying to enable those with abilities and interests in hacking on relevant critical areas via whatever means and resources are at my disposal through the work I'm doing. > >> > > The reason this issue hasn't been solved by us is because it's simply >> > > not possible given Intel's hostility and refusal to cooperate. Reverse >> > > engineering is a non-trivial task and the resulting code would not run >> > > on modern Intel systems due to digital signatures. >> > >> > Of course, we all agree that x86 is a dead-end, at least in the long? >> > run. There >> > are still possibilities with somewhat old Intel and AMD hardware, but? >> > these will >> > be outdated eventually. Also, note that most of these old x86 platforms? >> > are >> > much, much faster than the A20. >> >> Of course. The solution isn't intended to outperform. It's intended >> to? >> solve a problem. That problem is X86 doesn't work for us and it's too? >> costly to have to design and manufacture our own non-x86 hardware >> (which? >> is critical given all newer non-X86 hardware is dependent on other? >> proprietary components such as 802.11ac wifi chips). > > My point is that not all x86 hardware is doomed. With some work, some > AMD > platforms could work with fully free software. Thus, I'm not saying > it's a > solution to the problem, I'm saying it gets rid of the problem, on > those > specific devices. Yes- but these are older and still going to fail. 10 year old systems are prone to failure because of changes which occurred. Legal changes in the law many years ago. I think there might be some Intel Atom stuff that might sort of work still or I should see be a potential candidate today. I guess it might not be completely dead for X86. However I think there are other reasons besides this that X86 should be considered dead. We need to expand the variety of companies we can choose from in order to ensure or reduce the risk. By sticking with X86 we increase our risks. The whole point of EOMA68 is to put the very low level components in our hands to control. We're not dependent on Intel or AMD or any particular company. It's a means of expanding and cutting the cost of design and manufacture. It more fully puts the control of new systems and what components are used into the hands of the free software community. This is why we've funded this. It solves more than one issue. It's solves keyboard/LCD controller firmware/various problems with CPU micro code/management engine firmware/hard disk firmwares/etc. > But of course, since we're talking about old platforms, this approach > is quite > limited in time. So it is likely that such computers will either become > too > rare, obsolete in some aspects, or will simply be outperformed by newer > generations of computers that can run with fully free software as well. Yes. This is what I've been trying to say. I wanted to skip over all of this, but it's taken years to get to a point where we could even begin to solve the problem properly and to put money into freeing ancient X86 hardware was a losing battle. There was good reason not to take that path as far back as 2009 when I first looked into that approach. It made more sense to try a new approach which is why we've been funding EOMA68. I think EOMA68 will work even if its a bit difficult to see right now. Yes- the current EOMA68 designs aren't that powerful, but we are in full control and it'll be much cheaper and more practical and thus feasible to ship higher end hardware in the very near future. Whereas LibreBoot will be stuck on either older X86 hardware or it'll be put onto ChromeBooks that are dependent on critical components like wifi that are all dependent on non-free firmwares [at least for systems you could reasonably get in volume]. Now OpenPOWER (or TALOS really) is really a separate project of which I don't know how much LibreBoot really matters for it to work or how likely it is to succeed (or do so long term). It's a hardware project ultimately. Hopefully it succeeds, but I'll be holding my breath, and it's not really something that is going to hit your average user. Which seems means it looks like a pretty risky endeavor to me. Hopefully they have a plan and the marketing to hit the target customer base its presumably being designed for. It seems like a niche of a niche market that could be hard to market to short of having specialized knowledge and maybe even working from within one of a handful certain large companies. However I don't know. It's not our customer base. I do know a lot of people who would love to buy such a system- but very few have the kind of money needed to actually buy one. Thus I again see this as very risky/highly prone to fail. Hopefully I'm wrong though and its a really awesome solution if the price were ever to drop into a range where your average person could get one. >> The solution to? >> that is modularization. This has a side benefit of making it easy and? >> cheap (relatively speaking, and therefore feasible) to manufacture >> new? >> 'models' in addition to giving us inroads to obtain source code for? >> higher end CPUs [moving forward]. Even ones that aren't yet on the? >> market! That's a huge change to the two steps forward one step back >> we? >> were doing before. Right now we are several years behind because of >> our? >> dependence on X86 and companies who won't cooperate. By moving away >> and? >> modularizing we can let companies designing CPUs cater to our >> demands.? >> This is what you get from competition. > > I agree modularization is nice, but I don't think it fundamentally > changes the > game regarding freedom, but more of a practical, nice feature to have. > For some > other aspects, like environment-related ones, it is of course quite > fundamental > though. Yea- it's hard to get people to understand how this is going to enable freedom. All I can say is if you don't get it- well- just wait- we've already moved the bar significantly. We have a modern laptop and desktop design capable of 1080p video that isn't dependent on any proprietary pieces. Not even a proprietary keyboard/LCD controller. By modularizing key components we get the price down so not only can we get two devices out of this we can get many more down the road that wouldn't otherwise be possible. There is a limited amount of $$$ within the free software community to throw at such projects so by modularizing things it can get the cost of key components down drastically and you can then manufacture housings for a fraction of the down payment that would be needed if you needed to do everything. It also enables us to get to a point where we have influence over the companies designing key components. For multiple reasons. One because we can switch companies easily now whereas we couldn't before. And two because the volume of the key components jumps significantly when you start talking about a card that can go into lots of different devices rather than a motherboard that'll have a severely limited manufacturing run otherwise. We've already had many successes as a result of this crowd funding campaign and approach. It's radically altering the landscape of what is possible given the limited funding available within the free software and GNU/Linux world. > >> > > We can do a lot more??than what is feasible with LibreBoot, but it has? >> > > taken >> > > years. Now that EOMA68 crowd funding campaign has succeeded though or? >> > > is about >> > > to succeed we can do a 100% free software system >> > >> > Note that the level of free software support brought by the EOMA68 is? >> > not really >> > something new. >> >> This is incorrect or a misunderstanding of the value here. Its taken? >> years and a lot of reverse engineering to get the Allwinner A20? >> supported. While the first computer card is in part built off the >> work? >> of others at a component level it's not the value for which I'm? >> referring that EOMA68 adds in relation to free software. The value is >> in? >> the modular standard and what it is enabling us to do in the free? >> software world. To look at the CPU and components individually is to? >> misunderstand the value in this project. It was not essential that we? >> utilize the Allwinner A20. It just made a lot of sense given the work? >> others have already done including the work of Luke (for which we? >> sponsored). The value is we get to pick and choose each part that >> goes? >> into a system and when one company upstream doesn't cooperate we can? >> look elsewhere. We don't have to spend years reverse engineering >> parts? >> thereof when we can work in collaboration with the companies upstream? >> doing the design of these CPUs/SOCs. To achieve that we need control? >> over the design and manufacturing process. This is not something we >> had? >> before. This is not something most companies have. Most companies >> build? >> off of reference designs and the product designs are little different? >> than the reference designs in many if not most cases. A tweak or two >> at? >> best. > > Again, I don't see why modularity changes the game here. The problem > has never > really been the lack of acceptable hardware. ARM Chromebooks are such > an > example. There have been countless other Allwinner boards, such as the > ones from > Olimex, that do very well with free software. For each possible > platform that is > somewhat interesting to free software, there are already boards > available. There are zero laptops, tablets, or phones that are 100% free today. Every readily available Chromebook has critical components that are dependent proprietary bits. 802.11ac wifi is a great example of this. These systems are not designed for free software users even if we can steal some of the work done by Google on Chromebooks for use in EOMA68 laptop housings. There is a big difference between these mini board computers and what EOMA68 will enable. EOMA68 is a standard and will reduce the cost of getting all sorts of different types of devices manufactured down the road because the key components don't have to be manufactured in small quantities any more thus reducing the cost of the overall devices. The cost of the laptop housing wasn't a whole heck of a lot. But if you tried to get a laptop housing plus computer card manufactured (which would have been significantly more expensive because of the reduce demand) this project would have failed. It took three essentially different 'products' to make the financial aspect of this project work. In the future if you design a housing for say a tablet you won't have to raise the money to manufacture what amounts to be the motherboard/CPU/ram if you design it around the EOMA68 standard. And because EOMA68 isn't just a single computer card, but it is a standard for which other computer cards can be designed all these devices can be upgraded at a fraction of the cost. You don't have to spend $1500 to replace the entire laptop. You just have to replace the computer card in the EOMA68 compatible laptop housing to go from a dual-core system to quad-core system. Yike! That's awesome. There is no way you'd be able to pull off a project like this if it wasn't modular. You would never have been able to produce a freedom-friendly long-lived laptop if it was a single board for a single chassis. It would have cost $200,000 just for the manufacturing and the campaign evidenced we wouldn't have even hit that number. The number of laptop housing sold combined with one computer card for each was significantly below the $200,000 number. At the same time taking a ChromeBook, throwing LibreBoot on it, etc won't make it as free as this EOMA68 compatible laptop design. And it's not just this laptop that'll be possible now. It's other classes of devices like tablets, phones, desktops, and similar. > > The way I see it, the EOMA68 is a i+1 iteration of this. Most certainly > a much > better one than most of the ones before, but not a game changer still. > Again, > just to be perfectly clear, this is not to undermine the project. All > iterations > that are better than the previous ones are leaps forward, and that's > the way to > go! OK- please point me to a single laptop in existence that is as free as this. The reality is you can't. You can't point me to anything that comes even close. It's not just an iteration or a small leap forward. A small leap forward would be if one more component were free'd or something similar. This enables lots of devices to be manufactured that are 100% free and it won't cost much. Which is the only way you'd be able to do it given the limited resources within this community. The laptop itself isn't even where the leap forward is. It's the EOMA68 standard. If you look at just the laptop even that is a huge leap forward, but it's only possible because of the EOMA68 standard. > >> > There have been dozens of computers, some of which come with a >> > free board design, using platforms that are as good for freedom,? >> > especially with >> > Allwinner (but there are lots of others). The linux-sunxi community has? >> > been >> > working hard on those for years and years, so this is nothing new or? >> > specific to >> > the EOMA68. >> > >> > Many ARM Chromebooks even go a step further, with a free software? >> > embedded >> > controller firmware. >> >> I'm in many cases referring to laptop designs. This isn't totally? >> correct though particularly as it relates to laptops. All of the ARM? >> Chromebooks have fundamental problems in one way or the other. There >> are? >> no free software friendly 802.11ac wifi chips and these wifi chips >> are? >> integrated on every single modern Chromebook that is readily >> available? >> [last I checked]. You can't easily replace these chips like you can >> with? >> X86. > > This is correct, but is also a detail because it has never really been > a > problem. Sticking-in an ath9k_htc dongle solves the issue with nearly > zero > associated drawbacks (and we can thank you for that).? It's a problem now if you want to have a modern laptop and it's a problem tomorrow if you want a *WORKING* laptop. The older X86 laptops running LibreBoot have a severely limited time left because of the materials required to be used by law. As a result they will if they haven't already started failing. You can't continue down that path. So you will have one other path maybe and it's utter crap. That would be to re-purpose chromebooks and these are all dependent on propritary wifi. A really crappy solution would be to stick in a USB wifi dongle externally.. but hardly ideal. > >> To solve this problem and many others in the process is to gain? >> control over the overall design and what you can utilize as your? >> building blocks. > > Of course, but anyone designing a board can do that. This is what was > done with > EOMA68, that extra step was taken. Modularity is only a flexible, > practically > convenient way to achieve that, but the problem has never been there. > Not cost effectively to be feasible. The feasible part is the important bit here. If it was so easy to do before why hasn't anyone done it? It's because it doesn't work financially. >> With the laptop housing that is part of this crowd? >> funding campaign you'll be able to get an Allwinner dual-core A20 on >> the? >> Libre Tea Computer Card today and upgrade to a quad-core CPU >> tomorrow.? >> It won't cost $500 either. It'll be under $100. > > To contrast, I personally fully support this approach (especially from > the > environmental perspective). I'm just saying, it's not a game changer on > the > freedom perspective. The environmental aspect is a side-benefit at best and it's the freedom perspective that is the real benefit here. I'm sorry you've completely failed to understand why that is, but we're going to be able to keep making progress primarily because of EOMA68. We've never even been close to a completely free laptop before. Only ones which were maybe sort of almost (but not really) "good enough" to call free. > >> > > (that is LibreBoot doesn't magically make a computer 100% free, there? >> > > are >> > > other problematic components). >> > >> > Of course, but nobody claimed that it does. It is only a very? >> > significant piece >> > in the software freedom puzzle. >> >> It's one of many pieces. It's not quite as significant as people >> think.? >> If it were gone it wouldn't really make any difference. > > Note that by Libreboot, I mean "fully free bootup software" in general, > regardless of the boards that are currently supported. This is what > Libreboot is > and targets, and it'll grow to cover as many of the boards it can > support as > possible. > > So what I meant is that fully free bootup software is a significant > piece in the > software freedom puzzle. Perhaps the most crucial one. Yes- 'fully free bootup software' is a critical key component. Absolutely. There are many critical components of course and we still need 802.11ac wifi, graphics, and similar. Though some of these might sort of be half-solvable in a sense. You can for the moment revert to 802.11n and you can cut corners and achieve free graphics maybe even too. It's a complicated mess of terrible options all of which need to fixed yet even if they haven't hit the critical point. I think we will get there, but these two in particular are *really* significant. 802.11ac is probably still more critical than the graphics only because we still don't really need 3D. That problem can be solve via software in simply not utilizing 3D accelerated components. Wifi though is pretty darn critical and if we can't get 802.11n components manufactured the world will literally end for the majority of free software users. It's probably the 2nd most important thing after a free bootloader. > >> There are many components for which we are dependent and there are no? >> alternative options. Wifi firmwares are a great example. We have only? >> one driver and chip for modern 802.11n that we can utilize (AR9271) >> and? >> nothing for 802.11ac (in any format, PCIE/M.2/USB). It won't be the >> case? >> that we can get AR9271 adapters manufactured forever and at some >> point? >> it will become critical that we work on obtaining sources [another? >> project we're working on]. > > I fully agree. Technology moving so fast really doesn't help either. > I'm truly > grateful that people like you are working hard to keep up the pace and > make sure > free software remains relevant and freedom is still a possibility > without living > ten years in the past. > >> Wifi cards are fundamental to modern computers. You can still get >> away? >> without 3D acceleration, but good luck with a system that doesn't >> have? >> internet connectivity. > > Agreed, without a doubt. > >> There are zero good options for graphics right now too. Graphics are >> not? >> quite critical because we can ship without it for the moment and the? >> user experience is still "good enough", > > Well, it would be unfair to say that the situation is that bad. Drivers > such as > nouveau support cards (with free firmwares in many cases, by the way) > that are > not tied to any specific architecture (not only x86 uses PCI) and there > are > efforts to support GPUs embedded in ARM SoCs, such as Freedreno and > Etnaviv (and > nouveau, too). I think this is all valuable and shows that we're going > somewhere. Maybe not as fast as we'd all like, but the amount of work > is huge. The graphics situation is utter crap unless we can combine the right components for which we have yet to succeed at doing (or the companies capable of doing it have not done it and have shown no interest in doing it yet, but that doesn't mean we're not talking to these companies to try and get what we want, but it's a long ways to go assuming we're even successful). I'd say the situation is only slightly better than I'd come to accept recently. While we have nouveau it's limited to older NVIDIA graphics card unless you are willing to accept non-free software on your system and if you even try newer cards that are suppose to work you'll find it's not remotely good enough. It's not even working. And while we might be able to do $10,000 workstations that are completely free that's not something you can make work in the real world. People don't have $10,000 or even $3,000, or even $1500 in most cases to throw at a computer. The other issue is getting these components that would work combined into an SOC which can be utilized or similar. So while the work people are doing is good, it's not that work which I'm criticizing. It's the situation. It's the limitations, it's the restrictions, it's the DRM, it's the signature checking, etc. > >> LibreBoot is a duplication of effort as far as critical components >> are? >> concerned and we should try to avoid duplication of efforts given the? >> limited resources available. > > This sounds particularly wrong to me. You're assuming a specific > structure here, > very much company-like, where a group of people get to decide of the > directions > for the group and others follow. This is not how our community works. > Our > community is best-effort based, so different people (or different > companies) > will work on different things as they please. I'm not telling anybody to work on anything. I'm simply saying if your objective is to work on critical components your not doing it as far as I can see via LibreBoot. We're not on the same page and there is nothing wrong with that, but we're not working with the same objectives in mind, and if we are it seems the LibreBoot approach is doomed to failure without someone else solving the hardware issues [ie TALOS]. Even then I'm not sure LibreBoot is needed if there are already other options. > I find it quite strange to make claims that suggest we should all > follow one > specific direction. People just do what they want to do. This is the > mostly > natural things for way to work in our community, and I have no doubt > that they > will keep working this way for a long time. If we are all going different directions to solve the same aim though there is only one that is going to pan out from where I'm standing and that I'm aware of. If I thought LibreBoot would solve the problems I'd have gone that direction. I didn't see that working out in 2009, 2014, or now. There are other people designing a motherboard for some model Lenovo laptop. If that had any chance of working I might have gone that direction. But none of these things are feasible solutions to solve the goal for the majority of people within our community of producing a system that maximizes freedom. There is a severe shortage of individuals with the skills needed to even begin to solve these problems [ie designing hardware, reverse engineering, etc] and I'm going to back the people whom have the right skills and seem to be doing what I think has the highest chance of success-or will otherwise listen to someone whose got an understanding of what'll most likely work and adapt. If there is nobody to back [which is scary and often the case] I'll throw what resources we have at other projects. For example: A GPS navigation device, freeing graphics chips, etc. In the past I've thrown resources, time, and energy at resurrecting free embedded OS firmware projects like LibreCMC (ie LibreWRT) for routers and freeing wireless firmwares (ath9k-htc), making it easier to adopt free software via making it easier to obtain free software friendly hardware, and simply working on the business/financial side of solving the problems of pulling such projects off. > >> > > We've got the source code for LCD/Keyboard controller firmware, >> > >> > Regarding LCD: are you talking about a MIPI interface done in software? >> > with a >> > MCU? Please feel free to share details about this LCD controller? >> > firmware, I'd >> > be very interested to learn more about it, it sounds unusual! >> >> I know a little bit about it, but not enough to give you details. The? >> details are readily available though. > > Okay, I'd be interested in those details out of curiosity, if you'd > like to > point me to them (I can take no for an answer, this is asking you to do > some > extra research work, that you can certainly do much more efficiently > than me). You would have to talk to Luke. > >> > > bootloaders, CPU micro code >> > >> > Huh? Again, please share details about the CPU microcodes. I am not? >> > aware of any >> > ARMv7 implementation using a microcode at all, nor of any that was? >> > liberated. >> >> Overgeneralized. As far as the A20 goes you are correct. I can >> confirm? >> that there is no micro code in this particular CPU. > > That makes sense. > >> I'll throw out some other words that may make more sense here: >> >> SPL uboot in mainline 2015-10- ddr3 timeings initialization and pll? >> clocks. > > Yup, the community sure did a great work there. RAM init is always the > trickiest > part of bootup and in that case, Allwinner only barely helped (or when > they did, > most of it had already been figured out IIRC). > >> > > and similar for the EOMA68 laptop housing and Libre Tea Computer Card.? >> > > That's >> > > huge. And there are more significant developments coming including the? >> > > release >> > > of schematics and higher end CPUs. >> > >> > I fully agree that this is great and I support your project. However,? >> > keep in >> > mind that this is nothing new or groundbreaking (not to undermine the? >> > project >> > and the efforts associated with it). >> >> I disagree. There is simply nothing you can compare this project to. >> We? >> are achieving results that can't be demonstrated via any other means. >> If? >> we could get here some other way at a lower cost with the same long >> term? >> impact I would have gone that route. > > See what Olimex has been doing for years then. They're also coming up > with a > laptop design. I agree that you went steps further than most before, > but this is > incremental improvement, not something truly new and groundbreaking > compared to > what existed before. Well, think what you want, but we actually did it. There are lots of other projects which were in the works and have been for years and none of them have gone anywhere to date. Maybe Olimex or somebody else will get somewhere. I don't know. If they are succeeding I haven't seen the evidence of that and success in my mind is more than coming out with a single laptop/desktop/device. Success in my mind is solving critical underlying issues like reducing the costs of doing such projects such that it opens doors for other projects and continued newer models, etc. And this is what I see as being a success. Not simply coming out with a one-off board, laptop, or similar. It has to work financially. > >> The issue is your looking at one thing. A few specs. It's not the >> specs? >> that matter. It's the standard, it's the modularization, it's the? >> response and cooperation we are getting already as a result of our? >> actions here, etc. Intel and AMD are not going to cooperate and >> building? >> off of other companies products (higher up the chain) is not a >> reliable? >> long term solution. > > Again, I don't see how modularization changes anything here. Hardware > availability has never been the problem. For laptops, we only had minor > annoyances,?like Wi-Fi chips that require proprietary firmwares, with > the most > advanced designs for freedom like ARM Chromebooks. So you took a step > forward > there. It's not a revolution, it's a step forward: solving the (minor) > Wi-Fi > issue. For single-board computers, you didn't bring any specific > improvement > over Olimex's Allwinner boards. These are nothing alike. Do you not understand what EOMA68 is? It's s standard that reduces the costs and enables us to do things that wouldn't otherwise be possible. There is a reason this hasn't been done before. It's not just one laptop or one desktop. It's a means of producing and continue to produce faster better devices and different types of devices long term. It enables us to get code and work with companies that wouldn't even talk to us before. If you produce a small quantity of something nobody will talk to you. If you produce a large quantity of something then companies start talking to you. EOMA68 will reduce the cost and increase the demand for critical components such that companies will be more willing to talk. > > Again, I don't want to sound like your project doesn't matter to me, > because it > really does. Only that it's an improved iteration over what exists > rather than > whole new ground. And that's totally fine by the way, it is a very sane > way to > go. It also shows that you're not the only person on earth caring about > these > issues and producing hardware that solves an increasing number of them > (even > though I suspect some other players produce devices with such results > without > really aiming at that goal). > > So overall, thanks for your work :) You simply don't get it... and it's not worth my time to explain it further. What really matters is I and others I'm working with keep at it so we (as in free software community working on hardware-related problems) keep moving forward in this area. It doesn't matter really if you do or don't get it. What matters to me is we continue making progress. There are certainly lots of other people doing good work. Heck- we've built off that work. To imply that I'm taking or trying to take credit for everything is wrong. This was not something that was all my/our own efforts. We're building off the work of many other people and some of our own work both now (EOMA68 / laptop / desktop designs / and I think some of it may be derived from previous work, as well as work by people doing RE on video components, DDR3 pieces, keyboard/LCD pieces, etc) and previously (ath9k-htc). There are also successes that are coming and/or haven't been revealed that'll better demonstrate what's possible and what this project has enabled already/will enable. But its still mind blowing to me that you don't get the significance of whats already been accomplished. To call it just an iteration is so far from reality to be unbelievable to me. From nobody at parabola.nu Thu Sep 22 00:17:08 2016 From: nobody at parabola.nu (Parabola Website Notification) Date: Thu, 22 Sep 2016 00:17:08 -0000 Subject: [Dev] Orphan Libre package [linux-libre-grsec] marked out-of-date Message-ID: <20160922001708.10139.51847@parabola.nu> jc_gargma at iserlohn-fortress.net wants to notify you that the following packages may be out-of-date: * linux-libre-grsec 1:4.7.4_gnu.r201609152234-1 [libre] (i686): https://parabolagnulinux.org/packages/libre/i686/linux-libre-grsec/ * linux-libre-grsec 1:4.7.4_gnu.r201609152234-1 [libre] (x86_64): https://parabolagnulinux.org/packages/libre/x86_64/linux-libre-grsec/ * linux-libre-grsec-docs 1:4.7.4_gnu.r201609152234-1 [libre] (i686): https://parabolagnulinux.org/packages/libre/i686/linux-libre-grsec-docs/ * linux-libre-grsec-docs 1:4.7.4_gnu.r201609152234-1 [libre] (x86_64): https://parabolagnulinux.org/packages/libre/x86_64/linux-libre-grsec-docs/ * linux-libre-grsec-headers 1:4.7.4_gnu.r201609152234-1 [libre] (i686): https://parabolagnulinux.org/packages/libre/i686/linux-libre-grsec-headers/ * linux-libre-grsec-headers 1:4.7.4_gnu.r201609152234-1 [libre] (x86_64): https://parabolagnulinux.org/packages/libre/x86_64/linux-libre-grsec-headers/ The user provided the following additional text: Grsecurity has released an updated patch for 4.7.4 From mariqueerta at bastardi.net Thu Sep 22 21:22:39 2016 From: mariqueerta at bastardi.net (manu) Date: Thu, 22 Sep 2016 23:22:39 +0200 Subject: [Dev] Parabola Unsync [FSF repository] Message-ID: <4f1cf2e4-7918-7068-305e-36efb99073da@bastardi.net> Hi! I'm marqueerta, some users from Parabola report in the IRC community that the repository mantained from FSF seems unsynced since a few days and they could upgrade (me too) when they commented the line with the link of FSF repository: /# Location: Boston, MA, USA// //# Responsible: Free Software Foundation // //# Work hours: 24*7// //#Server = http://mirror.fsf.org/parabola/$repo/os/$arch/ If you could fix this, we could use this new repo again. Thanks, Mariqueerta, Parabola GNU/ linux-libre user. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 801 bytes Desc: OpenPGP digital signature URL: From alejandrohp at openmailbox.org Fri Sep 30 20:01:51 2016 From: alejandrohp at openmailbox.org (=?UTF-8?Q?Alejandro_Hern=C3=A1ndez?=) Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2016 22:01:51 +0200 Subject: [Dev] [consensus][due: 2016-10-10] Script to obtain the optimized 'mirrorlist' Message-ID: <7c617d67f9f7ba6b51728714461009db@openmailbox.org> [Dev] [consensus][due: 2016-08-10] Mirrorlist in Parabola Currently, the /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist file requires be alert to any change in the https://www.parabola.nu/mirrors/status/ web and edit the file manually. This is not effective to keep updated Parabola, as has been seen recently. The most effective is to use the web https://www.parabola.nu/mirrorlist/ mirrorlist, ordering servers to the best score. And apply the appropriate criteria determined as: cache server before the server itself. "Parabola.nu" must go to independent end of their performance because it corresponds to our main server where the bandwidth we need to raise our packages and develop. Therefore, it should be created a script that obtains the information from the web https://www.parabola.nu/mirrorlist/ and then apply the additional custom criteria for obtaining file 'mirrorlist'. And that will run periodically (daily?). [SCRIPT TO OBTAIN THE OPTIMIZED 'MIRRORLIST'] Thanks. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From megver83 at openmailbox.org Fri Sep 30 22:45:55 2016 From: megver83 at openmailbox.org (Megver83) Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2016 19:45:55 -0300 Subject: [Dev] Parabola OpenRC Message-ID: <453e4504-ecbd-7e81-4859-f19f5e3ca7a2@openmailbox.org> Hi Parabola community. I have planned a project, as the title says, for creating a Parabola OpenRC installation. My idea is very simple, I?m not thinking on creating Parabola ISOs with OpenRC (but would be a good idea), just creating a base groups that installs OpenRC from PCR instead of Systemd and replace packages that depend on Systemd with the ones of the arch-nosystemd repo from here https://sourceforge.net/projects/archopenrc/files/arch-nosystemd/ the good news is that all the packages are in the official repositories but without the -nosystemd suffix, except for plymouth (free software, used by Trisquel) and mdm (Mate display manager, free software too). So in theory there should be no problem in adding them into the official repos, but if for some reason one day it begins to include non-free software, you only blacklist it. There?s also an important package which is desktop-privileges (you can find it in the AUR and here https://sourceforge.net/projects/archopenrc/files/openrc-eudev/), free software too, is a collection of polkit rules to manage automounting of removable media, suspend and hibernate actions and CPU frequency settings, all its dependencies are satisfy with the Parabola packages, except for udisks2-nosystemd (should be added into the openrc-desktop group). My idea consists in creating two groups: base-openrc and base-devel-openrc (you can use other names of course), which replaces systemd with OpenRC and packages that depend on systemd like util-linux with util-linux-nosystemd and so on. The other option is to make the base groups with openrc and if you don?t want to include the nosystemd packages you can add eudev-systemd (as the provider for Systemd) and libeudev-systemd (as the provider of libsystemd) on the base-openrc or base-devel-openrc group, to satisfy the systemd-dependent packages. Personally, I prefer the first option. If you approve my idea, I strongly recommend to add desktop-privileges to the openrc-desktop group, because is important for graphical environments (it is not in the arch-nosystemd repo). Please, evaluate the arch-nosystemd repo and consider its inclusion or including its packages. I?m doing this proposal for all the ones that don?t like Systemd. I know about all the polemic it has generated, but the reason why I do not like it is because one day I turned off my PC, I was going to bed, but Systemd did a bad job and it stayed on for all the night, and I would not want that for anyone. Last time I did a proposal was when I recommended the creation of a forum https://lists.parabola.nu/pipermail/assist/2016-September/000732.html some people answered, most of them liked the idea, but I got no answer from the website developers or the people in charge of that. Maybe last time my proposal was no very well elaborated, but that?s not a reason to leave me and anyone without answer. I didn?t like that, but I that doesn?t repeat. Thanks in advance. Feel free to opine about this proposal!