I don’t think this is a fair way to frame this situation. We’ve done everything we can to make it possible to run the distribution of your choice, including properly integrating fixes into the device’s firmware instead of quirking and overriding in the OS. It is the FSF that chooses to ship a kernel denying you the choice to load device firmware. And other than Wi-Fi, reports indicate that Trisquel does work. You could use a USB Wi-Fi adapter with it.
In my opinion (I’d be interested in other opinions as well), freedom/liberty should mean that my computer allows me to run the software of my choice, even if I choose to run a piece of proprietary software. While it certainly should not recommend that path, I should be allowed to do so if I choose. Adding engineering to make the computer deny my request is an anti-feature.
It’s true that community-freed devices tend to be far behind the cutting edge. However I don’t think admitting defeat is a useful approach, we should still try to push the boundary in whatever small way we can.
If shipping outdated devices is unaccepatble, and shipping devices with firmware loaded by the OS is unacceptable, then what option remains? While I would love to engineer our own wireless cards with fully free firmware, we are not at a scale to do so. There is immense engineering effort needed, as well as regulatory issues likely requiring legal work, and we need to be able to produce and sell these devices in very high volume to achieve economies of scale that make it feasible.
That’s the grand vision. I believe we can get there in the long run, but we are not there today. To get there, we have to push the envelope as far as we can, show that there is demand for free software because of its inherent advantages, and gain enough momentum to pressure these vendors or build it ourselves.
This is objectively untrue.
If proprietary firmware is burned into a ROM, the vendor and system integrator have far more control. The devices could have malware injected on an individual basis, and you have no way to know. You have no way to replace or inspect that firmware. You place complete trust in it.
If the same proprietary firmware is stored on your system and uploaded at runtime, then you can compare it against others. You can also analyze it. If a security analyst identifies a version with issues (accidental or intentional), you can check whether you are running that version and choose a different one.
Definitely true. I still believe that moving firmware out of hidden ROMs is the first step toward user freedom. Wireless is the highest-value target IMO, so we start there.
Yes, this is also true, the Wi-Fi card in the Librem 11 is soldered to the board and not replaceable. We know this is a compromise. As I’ve said before, taking incremental steps is the only way to reach the grand vision. We can’t wait for perfection to produce anything. Despite the soldered Wi-Fi card, I believe the Librem 11 makes many steps in the right direction promoting user freedom, and there are few other devices doing this in this segment.
Thank you for clarifying this. I understand your point and I think this is fair that we can improve communication in this regard.
I believe you could use Trisquel if you installed a standard Linux kernel (still not including any nonfree components, but without the antifeatures to disable firmware loading).
We can’t possibly control every kernel customization in every OS distribution. While the blob jail is nonstandard, the Linux features to load device firmware using the configurable firmware search path are standard Linux features. Trisquel unfortunately disables one of these features. The only distributions I am aware of that do this are Trisquel and GNU Guix.
However I do see your point that a reader could interpret “operating systems that do not include any non-free components” could suggest Trisquel and GNU Guix, because there are few such operating systems. Readers probably are not aware that they disable a related standard kernel feature in their kernels. Actually, the OS I had in mind was an OS in use by a partner organization, but readers are less likely to be aware of this. I appreciate your clarification that the post may suggest a specific meaning I had not intended.