Relationship with Google?

Sorry for sounding strange. That is all.

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It does not seem to me like a conflict of interest – one can work with good programmers who happen to be employees of Google, and criticise Google’s (other) actions at the same time without hypocrisy.

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[REDDIT] Agreed, one can unite with Gogol if the goal is to defeat Shintel [/REDDIT]

I don’t really see what the point here is.

Are you saying they shouldn’t be using Coreboot? It’s a heck of a lot better than using closed-source proprietary BIOS.

What do you propose as an alternative then? I think Libreboot has fallen through, pretty much (drama and other nonsense at Libreboot). So I think Purism is just trying to make a blobless Coreboot themselves now. Not sure exactly though.

I’m not in the “Google is evil” camp anyway. I’d rather use a BIOS provided by Google than a BIOS by my computer manufacturer in most cases. Google usually provides settings for changing privacy-related options and regardless of privacy arguments almost always has the best security. I think you should use StartPage for searches instead of Google when you can, but that’s about it. I still use Chromium because it’s the most secure, though it’s heavily modified from default to ensure privacy is also respected.

Anyway, all of that aside, even if I did think Google was evil - open source is open source. Once it’s blobless it won’t matter who wrote the code, long as you can read it yourself and verify it’s not malicious it’s fine.

You seem to have just made a far-fetched accusation without providing any alternative. And it really is rather ridiculous, you can’t just ban anyone that’s ever worked at Google just because you’re not the hottest about Google’s morals or something. You’d be foregoing a lot of the industry’s best programmers.

You should look into how many Linux distros were made with by or at least including people who also worked at Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Yahoo, AT&T, Verizon, Dell, Sony, Samsung, ASUS, etc etc etc. You could find that most Linux distros and open software are made by people that once worked for a company like those.

Also the headline is horribly misleading. “Explain your undisclosed relationship with Google”. Yeah, there really isn’t one. Purism doesn’t have a relationship with Google. Coreboot was just made by people that used to work at Google.

You couldn’t even say that Coreboot really “has a relationship with Google”, let alone Purism.

It just comes off to me as someone trying to smear Purism a bit.

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Never mind, I was trying to figure something out about their laptops and hastily jumped to this conclusion.

I’m done with this thread.

Initial coreboot port for Librem 13 rev1 was made by people that worked for Google, but that port was never complete. Purism hired Youness Alaoui to complete and fix the coreboot for L13 rev1 and port coreboot to other devices. There is no Google connection whatsoever.

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