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On 12/19/2017 11:51 AM, Dame Más wrote:
I finished the University and I have free time to do things. And this seems like an interesting project to which I dedicate many hours.
The truth is that I read a lot these days. The work you do kakaroto is impressive. In general Purism is doing something big, and I spoke ahead of time.
I saw that in the directory coreboot/3rdparty/blobs/mainboard/purism/ there is no content, it is right?
Thanks
The main question I have, and this is an honest question, is why Purism chose to use the x86 platform as a base for libre hardware, when it has been known for some time that said hardware could never be made fully blob-free?
There were (and are) other good ways to make a system that could be fully blob-free, for instance ARM, and given the engineering effort that is said to have been put into the Purism machines I wonder what we could have had if said effort had been put into an aarch64 system instead of an x86 system?
- -- Timothy Pearson Raptor Engineering +1 (415) 727-8645 (direct line) +1 (512) 690-0200 (switchboard) https://www.raptorengineering.com
On Tue, Dec 19, 2017 at 2:07 PM, Timothy Pearson tpearson@raptorengineering.com wrote:
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On 12/19/2017 11:51 AM, Dame Más wrote:
I finished the University and I have free time to do things. And this seems like an interesting project to which I dedicate many hours.
The truth is that I read a lot these days. The work you do kakaroto is impressive. In general Purism is doing something big, and I spoke ahead of time.
I saw that in the directory coreboot/3rdparty/blobs/mainboard/purism/ there is no content, it is right?
Thanks
The main question I have, and this is an honest question, is why Purism chose to use the x86 platform as a base for libre hardware, when it has been known for some time that said hardware could never be made fully blob-free?
There were (and are) other good ways to make a system that could be fully blob-free, for instance ARM, and given the engineering effort that is said to have been put into the Purism machines I wonder what we could have had if said effort had been put into an aarch64 system instead of an x86 system?
That's a very good question and you're not the first one to ask it.
I think it's a combination of quite a few things. First, the fact that I don't think there were any realistically powerfuly/competing ARM/PPC/risc systems available at the time (or if there were, the price would have been too high to make it a "security focused laptop for everyone"). The purpose of Purism is not to satisfy a niche market, but rather to be something everyone will want whether or not they care about the security like we do, but which would still provide them with that security that they need. I think even now, you can't have an ARM device that could compete with an i7 in terms of performance.
The second reason is that Todd (CEO) was in talks with Intel and was unfortunately lead to believe that they were open to release an ME-less design CPU for his needs, it ended up not being the case.
The last reason is because I think that through this discussion (https://mail.coreboot.org/pipermail/coreboot/2014-August/078511.html) Todd thought that it would be possible to get a binary blob free coreboot/CPU with a few months of work. He didn't realize that it was a much harder thing to achieve because the FSP takes a lot of time to reverse engineer (remember, he thought he would have an ME-less CPU from Intel), but from what I read in one of his answers, he had already decided on x86 by the time he wrote that mail to the mailing list, so I'm not sure if it really answers your question.
I think those that provide non-x86 (or pre-2008 x86) machines are already there to fill the blob-free need, and it's not healthy to just compete with them. A good summary is that we want to "bring blob-free to the hardware that people want", rather than "bring blob-free hardware to the people who want it".
Finally, I'll paste you one of my explanations from an email I sent here last May, which kind of summarizes it all (from https://mail.coreboot.org/pipermail/coreboot/2017-May/084166.html)
"[...], You ask why Purism doesn't just create laptops using FX2 or ARM or whatever... Well, because that's not what most people want, out there. If you want a RYF laptop using old or underpowered hardware or non-x86 architectures, that's a problem that has already been solved, there are various resellers of such devices. The idea here is not to "Use what we can find to make RYF" but rather "Bring RYF to the hardware that people want". What I believe Purism is trying to do is to create a modern laptop for *everyone* with the extra value of security and privacy, and in the process make FLOSS appealing to mainstream instead of letting it be confined in a niche. I think everyone will be better off with tools to protect their privacy/security without asking them to throw the baby with the bathwater by requiring them to use hardware that does not interest them (otherwise, if old or non-x86 architectures were so appealing, you would have seen that become the norm rather than the exception)."
I hope that fully answers your question.
Thanks! Youness.
Timothy Pearson Raptor Engineering +1 (415) 727-8645 (direct line) +1 (512) 690-0200 (switchboard) https://www.raptorengineering.com -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1
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