Incidentally, this is one reason why there's not so much open source hardware out there: people get pedantic about it and apply gradually more unreasonable levels of requirement, rather than accepting partially or substantially open source solutions.
I can be pedantically forgiving myself, admittedly, but this is one thing I'm staunchly behind. If I cannot read every character of every line of code, including packages/dependencies, that makes the hardware function and allows me to alter it as I see fit, then it is not truly open-sourced.
For me, the open-source movement is about keeping my software and hardware in alignment with my values and security concerns. If there is a part of that "open-sourced" software that is closed to me, I have no way to evaluate that and determine if I want to use it. Yes, this imposes some extremely strict limitations about what I end up with in my projects, but I'm okay with this since it forces me to think differently about certain problems.
I also don't mind that other people use product with closed-source portions or whatever, and in fact, find some of them quite good. I'm a wearer of an original Pebble to this day, and I'm fine with knowing some proprietary libraries are needed to make it go. I didn't build it, I'm not hacking on it, it's just serving my meager smartwatch needs in this instance.
What I do mind is misappropriation of what I consider a clearly defined term. I am not sure why we haven't come up with another term to mean "partially open-sourced" yet (or have we, and I am just not aware of it?) but I think it's time we did so more discerning users can delineate between the two when making a decision about products to purchase or build.
The reason why people get "pedantic" about this stuff, is due the ability in the future to get screwed over when the priority blob owner start to charge money or other pull other license crap
1. It's the other way around: because people don't care that much, that's why there is almost exclusively proprietary hardware around.
2. The people who require the "higher grades" of being open source are simply not a large enough market
3. Being open source is not a natural advantage of a product, in fact, it's more of a risk, liability, responsibility, and effort than being proprietary.
Read Reflections on Trusting Trust to understand why having little bits of binary blobs sprinkled all over your compute arch is actually a major problem. Just because it’s a hard problem doesn’t mean we’re gonna pretend it’s fine.
FOSS enthusiasts are the worst customers imaginable. Not only are they pedantic to the absurd levels you mention, they are also political extremists and will start a witch hunt unless you and your entire company does exactly as they say in every matter imaginable.
And worst of all: They are incredibly cheap and don't want to spend any of their money on high quality products or services. Scream at every dollar they have to spend. "I'm better off with this hand-me-down computer that my sister gave me when her office job upgraded machines".
Trying to please FOSS people is like opening a five star budget restaurant for people with complicated allergies. You're going to deal with the worst of humanity and go broke in the process.
Given how easy is to put and keep hidden malware into devices, governments should demand openness in that field as well. By "putting malware" I don't mean script kiddies in their moms basement but malware/spyware planted by design, which is extremely easy to do if you're the manufacturer, extremely easy to demand/force if you're the government above that manufacturer, and extremely hard to detect if you're a different user in a different country under a government that didn't demand full openness. I know it's impossible as business rules go, but ideally it shouldn't be.
The framework laptop , any hard drive ( meaning the hard drives , internal system software ) would not be open source.
the embedded software in a SSD , possibly, but the chips could have backdoors etc
> Above a certain complexity, there is basically no 100% open-source hardware out there.
>
> Like none of the Pinephone, Librem, Framework laptops are "open-source" to the bone.
As an aside, GNU Librephone aims to rectify that by reverse-engineering those blobs and develop their own firmware for baseband chips etc. But I am carefully optimistic about the success since it is a relatively new project and quite a moonshot, even though I would personally stand first in line to buy one if it would materialize.
Well the Pebble specific parts are. This is an unfortunate state of affairs from hardware manufacturers, they are very late to the open source game, if at all.
Between the cross-licensing of hardware IP blocks and 3rd party software which never sees the light of the day, hardware manufacturers work like a secretive three letter agency to be able to control every part of their ecosystem.
I tend to understand where this comes from. It's part business, part continuation of old customs and the way they did it and being able to control obsolescence to be able push new things to the market.
However, if the periphery of the software you put out is closed source, even though this periphery is optional, it's not fair or ethical to say it's 100% open source.
From my perspective, it can be said it's open core, and it's pretty fair, and acceptable in my case, but writing 100% Open Source* (*: 100% of the open part of the software stack, exceptions apply) is not fair game. It's misleading.
>Another important note - some binary blobs and other non-free software components are used today in PebbleOS and the Pebble mobile app (ex: the heart rate sensor on PT2 , Memfault library, and others). Optional non-free web services, like Wispr-flow API speech recognizer, are also used. These non-free software components are not required - you can compile and run Pebble watch software without them. This will always be the case. More non-free software components may appear in our software in the future. The core Pebble watch software stack (everything you need to use your Pebble watch) will always be open source.
Closed verilog I can accept. But in general firmware is also software, for example it has become quite popular in the recent years to execute firmware on an embedded riscv cpu. And move more and more functionality to that kind of firmware.
pjc50|3 months ago
0xEF|3 months ago
For me, the open-source movement is about keeping my software and hardware in alignment with my values and security concerns. If there is a part of that "open-sourced" software that is closed to me, I have no way to evaluate that and determine if I want to use it. Yes, this imposes some extremely strict limitations about what I end up with in my projects, but I'm okay with this since it forces me to think differently about certain problems.
I also don't mind that other people use product with closed-source portions or whatever, and in fact, find some of them quite good. I'm a wearer of an original Pebble to this day, and I'm fine with knowing some proprietary libraries are needed to make it go. I didn't build it, I'm not hacking on it, it's just serving my meager smartwatch needs in this instance.
What I do mind is misappropriation of what I consider a clearly defined term. I am not sure why we haven't come up with another term to mean "partially open-sourced" yet (or have we, and I am just not aware of it?) but I think it's time we did so more discerning users can delineate between the two when making a decision about products to purchase or build.
123pie123|3 months ago
npteljes|3 months ago
2. The people who require the "higher grades" of being open source are simply not a large enough market
3. Being open source is not a natural advantage of a product, in fact, it's more of a risk, liability, responsibility, and effort than being proprietary.
Hence, proprietary is the default.
user3939382|3 months ago
carlosjobim|3 months ago
And worst of all: They are incredibly cheap and don't want to spend any of their money on high quality products or services. Scream at every dollar they have to spend. "I'm better off with this hand-me-down computer that my sister gave me when her office job upgraded machines".
Trying to please FOSS people is like opening a five star budget restaurant for people with complicated allergies. You're going to deal with the worst of humanity and go broke in the process.
gf000|3 months ago
Like none of the Pinephone, Librem, Framework laptops are "open-source" to the bone.
squarefoot|3 months ago
fsflover|3 months ago
asdefghyk|3 months ago
kchr|3 months ago
As an aside, GNU Librephone aims to rectify that by reverse-engineering those blobs and develop their own firmware for baseband chips etc. But I am carefully optimistic about the success since it is a relatively new project and quite a moonshot, even though I would personally stand first in line to buy one if it would materialize.
lrvick|3 months ago
cncjchsue7|3 months ago
ddlsmurf|3 months ago
bayindirh|3 months ago
I tend to understand where this comes from. It's part business, part continuation of old customs and the way they did it and being able to control obsolescence to be able push new things to the market.
However, if the periphery of the software you put out is closed source, even though this periphery is optional, it's not fair or ethical to say it's 100% open source.
From my perspective, it can be said it's open core, and it's pretty fair, and acceptable in my case, but writing 100% Open Source* (*: 100% of the open part of the software stack, exceptions apply) is not fair game. It's misleading.
bloppe|3 months ago
paxcoder|3 months ago
>Another important note - some binary blobs and other non-free software components are used today in PebbleOS and the Pebble mobile app (ex: the heart rate sensor on PT2 , Memfault library, and others). Optional non-free web services, like Wispr-flow API speech recognizer, are also used. These non-free software components are not required - you can compile and run Pebble watch software without them. This will always be the case. More non-free software components may appear in our software in the future. The core Pebble watch software stack (everything you need to use your Pebble watch) will always be open source.
100% should mean 100%
Wowfunhappy|3 months ago
aallaall|3 months ago