Re: FSF continuously harms Free Hardware

[XianJun Jiao]

   The time has changed.

   The FPGA is a kind of digital hardware that allows user to change its
   design via HDL — Hardware Description Language.

   For instance, WiFi chip/card is regarded as hardware traditionally I
   guess? But we have opensourced our FPGA based WiFi card design in
   openwifi project [1]https://github.com/open-sdr

   Lots of users/researchers changed our design for their research and
   need already. They can’t do this on top of COTS WiFi chip   See the
   publications [2]https://github.com/open-sdr/openwifi/blob/master/doc/pu
   blications.md

   And the FPGA is becoming cheaper and cheaper. Lots of hardware designs
   are adopting FPGA.

   But in this FPGA design domain, the situation of free design is still
   not as mature as free software. There are still lots of non-free
   pieces, from vendor’s tool chain to the vendor’s non-free ip cores.

   It will be pity that if FSF doesn’t care about hardware (at least the
   FPGA type of hardware). FSF is leading the free software movement, and
   has huge impact to the world. If FSF could push further (at least for
   the FPGA type of hardware), I think that will make the tech more
   open/free from the point view of full stack.

   Xianjun Jiao

     On 18 Jan 2022, at 04:27, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:

   [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
   [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
   [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
   In my view, the idea of "free hardware" is not a good concept.  The
   distinction between free and nonfree software is crucially about
   whether users can change it.  But most changes in hardware are
   impossible.  I don't think that distinction makes sense for physical
   pieces of hardware.
   Rather, it makes sense for hardware _designs_.
   See https://gnu.org/philosophy/free-hardware-designs.html for more
   about this issue.
   --
   Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
   Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
   Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
   Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)
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References

   1. https://github.com/open-sdr
   2. https://github.com/open-sdr/openwifi/blob/master/doc/publications.md