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I would also like to point out that Timothy is a psychopath. The reason I told him I couldn't pay the final 15k on the KCMA-D8 is because I would have ended up *homeless* if I did. He told me he didn't care, and that I didn't deserve a home or to eat properly. He only cared about that 15k, despite the fact that I already paid the full 75 for the D16 contract, and despite all the positive endorsement and support that I gave TALOS on libreboot.org when that campaign was still running.
I had every intention of paying Timothy that 15k, if I became able to. But now that will not happen, as a result of what he has done and said in the last 24 hours.
On 20/01/17 13:15, Leah Rowe wrote:
I'm just going to paste what I wrote on phoronix's comments section.
On 19/01/17 17:58, Timothy Pearson wrote:
Sorry to revive an old thread, but as many of you are aware Minifree (Leah Rowe) contracted with us to port the KCMA-D8 and release it. We performed this work and the KCMA-D8 continues to operate, however Minifree has decided not to pay their contract on this work. We strongly recommend that no person do any business with Minifree or its founder Leah Rowe, as they do not honor their legally binding contracts.
I'm perfectly happy for Raptor to publicly complain. This is only fair, and they have the right. However, there are certain facts that I would like to point out clearly for the community.
Fact 1: I paid 100% of the KGPE-D16 contract with was 75k USD I did not pay the KCMA-D8 contract which was 15k. Timothy's email implies that I barely paid any of it. The D8 was a mere extension on top of the D16 and was a few weeks work for Timothy. The article also implies that I was unwilling to pay the remaining 15k. I was actually *unable* to pay. Big difference. I fully paid for the KGPE-D16 contract, and D16 is all that Minifree sells. Most people don't use D8 and it wasn't viable to sell. I would also like to point out that several organisations now use the KGPE-D16 with libreboot. This includes the Free Software Foundation, to host their websites. I personally sacrificed a lot to pull that off. I find it deeply insulting that Timothy causes all this fuss about the D8. The D8 port was also missold to me. I was lead to believe that the hardware was readily available when it wasn't (unlike D16 hardware), so the work for the D8 was more or less a waste of resources.
Fact 2: Libreboot is not a dead project. We are currently working on a new release behind the scenes. We've merged an entirely new build system that was written from scratch, to replace the old one (the one that is "stagnant and hard to use" according to the article). It's in the libreboot git repository as I speak, it was merged a few days ago. Please mention this. The new build system is extremely modern, flexible and easy to use. It adds many features which the old build system lacked, such as (but certainly not limited to): * easy ability to build and integrate linux kernel payloads (*hint* petitboot *hint*) * integrates all chromebook-related utils, for rockchip ARM chromebooks * integrates chromeos flashrom, in addition to upstream flashrom * generally better design, more modular, easier to maintain, easier to build * plus a whole host of other advantages * about 10 new chromebooks have been added to libreboot. So much for libreboot being dead, eh?
Please also mention that Libreboot is actually abandoning coreboot and will be using Librecore as upstream. This will be covered in my upcoming FOSDEM talk too. We have been quite public about this already, on the Libreboot bug tracker.
I would also like to point out, that so far Raptor Engineering has not fixed the bug on KGPE-D16 where above 128GiB RAM becomes unstable to the point of being unusable. Only up to 128GiB works. This is less than what the contract suggests. They also released source code that was broken; memory initialization was broken on most memory modules. It took 6 months after the initial release of the KGPE-D16 source code for them to make memory initialization work, and even now raminit only works with a few modules.
This is in addition to other bugs which they haven't fixed. I also have IRC logs of private conversations between me and Timothy, where he states that he's willing to let the free/libre hardware movement crash and burn. This was before the dispute that happened yesterday regarding payment.
- -- Leah Rowe
Libreboot developer
Use free software. Free as in freedom. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software
Use a free operating system, GNU+Linux. https://libreboot.org/docs/distros/ Or BSD: https://libreboot.org/docs/bsd/
Use a free BIOS. https://libreboot.org/
Support computer user freedom. https://peers.community/
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