Re: FSF continuously harms Free Hardware

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ 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. ]]]

  > So if FSF took a stronger stand on Free Hardware Designs

The FSF does not take _any_ stand on free hardware designs.  I made
that decision strategically: I decided to fight in the thearer of
free software, where our efforts could win advances in a period of years.

In the ideal future, all hardware designs should be free, just as all
software should be free.  Maybe the FSF could someday adopt that as its goal.

But that future is distant.  It would be self-defeating to reject all
computers with anything made from a nonfree hardware design.  We'd
have to reject all computers.  What good would that be?

I decided to encourage people to work towards free hardware designs,
but not include "all hardware designs free" in the criterion for a
computer acceptable to use today.

  > I would be happy to contribute to RYF with certification process and 
  > moderation of Free Hardware Designs and contributing to h-node if the 
  > requested option for hardware freedom was added.

I can envision the FSF supporting catalogs to encourage and promote
products in which part of the hardware design is free.  Perhaps h-node
and RYF could mention that part of the design of a product is free,
when that is the case.

But it would not be part of the certification criteria for RYF.
The reasons why that depends only on software are just as valid now
as they were at the start.


-- 
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)