Re: purism why does fsf and libreplanet embrace a misleading company?

[Marcus Wilson]

I'm sorry but my email client seems to only show the letter A as the author so 
I'm going to use OP for original poster. 

It's clear that the original poster is very passionate. 

I am finding it difficult to parse their emails. I'm not sure if it's the 
writing style or what, but to help me try and understand I've tried rephrasing.

* Core Issue : Purism is selling and marketing products as if they did not 
contain proprietary software when they do. By doing this they are demonstrating 
a hostility to the Free Software movement and it is upsetting because the Free 
Software Foundation is associating with them by allowing them to table at 
events and apply for the RYF certification. 

* Sub Issue 1 : Purism uses Intel chips, and because Intel's chips all come 
with the Management Engine on them any device with an Intel chip is running 
non-free software.

What Purism has to say about the ME : https://puri.sm/learn/intel-me/

What I think is the problem OP has : Because the product page doesn't disclose 
or directly link to the ME page customers may not be aware of the ME on the 
Intel processor.

* Sub Issue 2 : Purism's cell phone the Librem 5 contains radios that require 
non-free software to operate.

What Purism has said : https://puri.sm/faq/ The question is near the bottom and 
is titled "Are all hardware components running completely free software, with 
the source code available?"

What I think is the problem OP has: Because there are still non-free components 
in the Librem 5 product the device does not meet the definition of free. 


How I feel about this : 
I found satisfactory answers to these issues in the Purism FAQ and when 
searching using Duck Duck Go and relevant terms. This company doesn't seem to 
be hostile or doing anything disingenuous. The Respect Your Freedom 
certification is run with integrity and I have faith that it is issued only 
when the standards are met.  

This is also pretty long for an email but I hope it's broken up and formatted 
enough that we can at least talk about it. This thread felt like yelling and it 
was making me feel sad. Please let me know if I have misunderstood something. 

Hope you're all enjoying Libre Planet !

-Marcus

On Sun, Mar 15, 2020, at 9:28 AM, Félicien Pillot wrote:
> On Sat, 14 Mar 2020 19:33:50 +0100
> a via libreplanet-discuss <libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org> wrote:
> 
> > https://web.archive.org/web/20141121173028/http://puri.sm/products/ No
> > mention of the fact that all new intel cpus require intel signed
> > software to work. No cryptographer believes it is possible to break
> > the key.
> 
> We are not speaking about software here, are we?
> 
> The computer is actually working with 100% free _software_, including
> drivers and kernel, but it does contain nonfree _firmware_ (BIOS, Intel
> signed microcodes, etc.)
> 
> -- 
>  Félicien Pillot
> 2C7C ACC0 FBDB ADBA E7BC 50D9 043C D143 6C87 9372
> felicien@gnu.org - felicien.pillot@riseup.net
> 
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