RYF certification L5

I’ve asked many times about this and kinda tired of it so can purism create / someone direct me to a blog from purism on RYF progress for the L5.

Why start another topic if there were already quite a few? Couldn’t you just comment there?

The current progress is mentioned here:

We’ve also gotten some questions about the various hardware certifications for the Librem 5 including Respect Your Freedom (RYF), FCC and CE. While we designed the Librem 5 to qualify for each of these certifications, we had to wait to start the certification processes until we had the final mass-produced “Evergreen” Librem 5 since changes in the hardware would require re-certification.

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thanks and that’s quite recent too but would be good if they could specify a general time frame. I have quite a lot of mistrust of purism so I am incredibly skeptical about them ever getting RYF for the L5 since none of their other products do apart from their OS. The company putting the word ‘libre’ in the name of their laptops when they clearly are not and how purism words their way of saying they only kinda removed ME makes it sound like you can trust the device when it still clearly runs not understandable proprietary code to start up as it requires it. Simple as. Though they have thought a lot about what hardware to put into this phone, I can’t trust it at all for anything critical until it gets approved for truly being ‘libre’ rather than claiming to be. At the moment, for anything very important, I use a T400 booted from USB on a free OS which still isn’t perfect due to proprietary EC and all but best I can have easy access to rather than paying a lot and waiting ages for a kcma-d8 or something so good enough for me.
edit: I know they tried having another CPU in the device and all for the proprietary modem but them trying to make it free doesn’t mean it is so is it even possible for them to get RYF due to that? At the very least, FSF would have to require them to ship the device with that not plugged in for it to be approved.

Of course, but the notebooks/Librem mini are barebones with Intel x64 CPUs. Good luck obtaining RYF for them. The Librem 5 is the first Purism device which has been electronically designed by themselves so they could assure to use only chips which could run with libre firmware.

So please, don’t spam the forum everytime with the same topics just because you are not satisfied with the current status.

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Purism always deliver on their promises, except for the time estimations. Given that they do what no one has ever done before, I think it’s fine.

The time frame of the FSF or FCC certification depends not on Purism by on the FSF and FCC.

FSF already recommend Librem 5 and given how strict they are in general, it means they do believe it will be certified.

Purism says quite clearly what is proprietary and what isn’t. Even though their laptops are not 100% libre, they are the most free on the market (see below about your T400). Purism are also definitely trying to make their devices are free as possible, even if it costs them a lot.

Did you hear about the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities? I have bad news for you: those issues will never be fixed by Intel for the RYF-certificated laptops, which makes them very insecure. I would not recommend that you do anything sensitive on them. To me it effectively means that those laptops are not free enough, because you just cannot fix their essential code.

Well, it appears that the FSF is less skeptical, as fsflover said, they recommended the L5 now two times in a row:
https://www.fsf.org/givingguide/v10/
https://www.fsf.org/givingguide/v11/

to be fair, they never applied their laptops for RYF, as it doesn’t make sense.
Maybe they will with a future laptop line that’s not Intel based.
Hovever, there’s one more device they applied for RYF certification:


Would be interesting to know the state.

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Are you saying their laptops weren’t? I thought their entire line up weren’t just some clevo clone but instead designed by them. They chose to use a modern, proprietary CPU in the name of looking like a freedom company with modern tech which they have not achieved. RYF will never come for the laptops they’ve made thus far and through the way they describe their products and even in the name of it with ‘libre’, it shows the company to be outright misleading but not technically fraudulent. I don’t really thing I spam but okay.

Kinda cool their key did. Pretty ebic.

Interesting. Pretty cool.

Good ! I’m kind of tired too…by whining people, hope you stop soon
Next time, you will maybe start doing something about it, like contacting Purism, the FSF, and starting a blog with regular update about their statements, or lake of it.
And sharing it with the community instead of waiting someone to do what is a priority for you

That’s right, it has absolutely nothing to do about speed and being able to compete :face_with_raised_eyebrow:, because they would have NO complains about speed with an overpriced shitty 10+ years old CPU not produced anywhere anymore

Because it’s easy to always complain about everything someone else is doing, I’m really interested about the realistic choice of CPU you would have made if you could have

Maybe I missed the news about the RYF certified CPU which can compete, in speed and price, against Intel and Amd

You’re right. I’m going to stop. Purism is a company that has done some good but freedom was never their first mission but performance instead while still keeping a decent amount of freedom. There is clearly not a real solution to it so that makes sense. I’ve given up on the company purism by now and will just look for FSF updates on certifications and if purism happens to show up there, I’ll buy. I’ll just suggest purism to someone if freedom was just an afterthought and if they do care about freedom, I’ll tell them to get librebootable hardware rather than pureboot crap.

And away :wave:

So you will put their privacy and security at risk? See my comment above about the Intel vulnerabilities.

What a brave way out to not backing up your unsubstantiated criticisms

Fair point. Alright give me a sec.

Very good.

Well I haven’t started a blog but I have talked to maybe 80 free software boys on matrix and some are more backing of purism but most generally agree purism getting RYF for the L5 is probably going to mess up somewhere due to the companies track history and how they play selling products in the past. I should contact purism and the FSF though which I will do now so thanks for suggesting that. Also, I don’t think I would have enough time to maintain a proper blog.

For a lot of my tasks, the ‘shitty’ CPUs from ‘10+ years’ ago are far more than enough. Most of those CPUs are fine for most. If someone requires more power, they can get a desktop with an opteron 62xx cpu which isn’t 10+ years and has 8 cores so not sure. They may have complaints about speed to price ratio but it would at least be justified as they worked really hard to make a free computer and actually did it rather than partially doing.

The ‘not produced anywhere anymore’ is something I completely agree with though. Unfortunately, they would have to buy second hand and stuff which would mean their volume of selling will decrease. Talked about RISC-V chip usage or powerpc but one is far too underdeveloped and the other is far too high electricity usage.

For a laptop, I would have liked a 4256 EE maybe (used condition). For a desktop, I’d like powerpc like from raptorcs. Maybe for the laptop a dual core would be fine sometimes. I’d still like the ones before though.

Nope. No news. They have nearly an absolute duopoly for desktops and laptops with only real other possible being powerpc but that’s mainly for big boy stuff. Is powerpc RYF? I think it is.
edit: A lot of AMD and intel CPUs are pretty safe anyways with a lot being supported by libreboot with no need for microcode update bs and PSP, AMT, ME, etc.

Fair enough. I know FCC is a complete a hole but thought FSF would be more transparent for time to purism which could then have be passed on to us.

Well that’s good. Swain my opinion.

Well how products are described in each’s product page says otherwise. Read them. Just feels eh. They say neutralized ME and all so you are all good but really they define neutralized in a weird way. They should link or show info at https://puri.sm/learn/software-freedom-in-perspective/ in their product page because that would be more truthful.
https://puri.sm/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/purism-software-breakdown-201411171.png
Also, they shouldn’t do that image of trying to make it seem like the computer is nearly entirely safe by showing a huge area of what runs on the computer to be liberated when the core components of how the computer works in the first place and runs first is proprietary and not under their control.

Well yes they are better than a lot of others but they aren’t 100% so why do they have the word in the name? Purem would fit better for their companies products. Also, you used a plural of product when linking only to the high investment they put into L5. Possible for L5 maybe because they tried a lot and understand it is technically possible rather than a theoretical like with intel chips.

Heard but not very much about of.

Oh no. Well nobody I have contacted through one has been in any trouble. I have a T400 that runs entirely free so would I even need to be concerned? When I mean entirely free I mean aids free, RYF approved GNU/Linux distro with no non-free JS and only using tor v3 links for web browsing from USB device.

Well what is something I could trust that is free. I really want to minimize exposing those that I communicate with.

ok so you want 100% and a fully open-hardware CPU like RISC-V for workstations that rivals the ‘big-league’. all good. i want that too. but how do you get there in a global-market that is centered around Surveillance-Capitalism ? IP is everywhere and very few people care to sell their house and everything they own to make free-software/open-hw be 100% the way you want, when you want …

i mean unless you’ve got the friggin’ global-BANKERS behind you … you probably can’t do anything in the short period of time that YOU seem to expect Purism to pull miracles from their ass … for a small SPC they do pretty well IMO … want to help reach the goal you want ? make people DEMAND free-software and open-hardware in the PUBLIC space …

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You’re right. It is a huge ask from purism but I don’t think a lot of it is close to impossible. Unfortunately, basic freedoms is a privilege.

Tried with little success. but will keep on. Aja aja fighting!

I know a few jews :wink: Just kidding.

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Agree. Communication never was their best part. But (eventual) shipping is.

Disagree. The existing proprietary part of the Coreboot is really tiny, measured in kilobytes. Intel ME shows errors and most probably can’t function.

They are better than everything else. See below. Also, Purism is the only company officially saying they want to change the industry for the better and won’t stop even after they receive RYF certification.

https://meltdownattack.com/

Any program running on your fully libre laptop can read the memory of any other program. Javascript on any website can read all your passwords. Vulnerability is in the proprietary CPU microcode, below the level of Libreboot, and cannot be fixed. I do not recommend to use such laptops or advise them to others.

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You don’t trust Purism, yet you use a computer from a company headquartered in Beijing. Do you trust Lenovo? I’m genuinely interested to know your reasoning, and I’m not trying to offend.

Edit: Lenovo also has a documented history of pre-installing malware on its computers.

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