This is only true if there is a policy in to GNU. But in fact it is not.

GNU is not politic, this is philosophy of life. :-)

The division into red and white is not applicable here. IMHO.

If by insert-distro-here you mean various fully libre distributions such as Freenix or Trisquel, there are excellent reasons why they are not ridiculous. First of all, there is a market demand for a blobless OS. Many users, including me, want to use an OS and be pretty sure it won't slip proprietary spyware into the mix. Most users, unlike me, cannot deblob an existing OS, so Freenix is simply meeting their demand, if nothing else. Next, users who desire this kind of product are not ridiculous either.

The distinction you draw between software and firmware is moot, and has been moot for years. What is kind of ridiculous is your statement that firmware has nothing to do with the OS, when actually the firmware only has to do with the OS and the hardware, sitting right in the middle. It is not at all silly to detest blobs in firmware: they are still softwares running on our chips (main or auxiliary, what does it matter?), and they are still capable of spying on us and boning us, even without exploiting DMA holes for the hostile takeover of the ring zero. It is also perfectly consistent to desire an OS which does not ship any proprietary software even if every card out there comes pre-baked with proprietary firmware. It is not any of our business if some of our users opt for proprietary hardware. We trust they are aware of the risk this entails, and we simply honor their request not to expand this attack surface with more blobs included with the OS! Or may be they are running a really clean system, like the ones from Leah, and then they have every reason in the world to make sure their OS is pure as well.

But an even easier mental calculation is done on the developer side: I personally find it hard to justify to myself re-distributing proprietary software to end users. I think this practice is incredibly shady, unless users receive a really scary and in-your-face warning which amounts to: you are about to compromise your system with malware, we hope you know what you are doing. But even with this warning, I still think the move is very nasty, and there has to be a really good user-centric reason for doing that in the first place. IMHO, pushing blobs is not worth it without miles and miles of silver lining.

Additionally, not only projects like Freenix, Trisquel, and Debian (main) provide software collections which are fully libre, they also have a policy in place which makes it very clear that fully libre they will remain, which is also not ridiculous at all, from the lay-users' point of view.

And more to the point, we are not merely striving to exclude blobs, we look at the bigger picture, and make sure the OS itself does not lead neophytes to install components which are reasonably well known to be proprietary. Removing nasty firmware blobs is only a part of what we do. We wouldn't, for example, distribute a web browser if it (browser itself, not some web page) prompted the user to install a nasty blob. This is what they called "trojans" back in the day when they called all programs that spy on you "spyware", and it's clearly malware, and we won't be caught distributing shit like that on purpose.

FSF deals with technically-free-but-still-rotten software via the Free Software Distribution Guidelines, which are considerably more stringent than the four-freedom test. Freenix went through the certification process not because we believe FSDG is alpha and omega of ethical distributions, but because we see some value in having an independent organization and a larger community to evaluate our work based on criteria we find reasonable enough. And because we don't actually think FSDG is as good as it could be, we started developing our own set of criteria, which we provisionally call UTC (we really need a better name ) and which are intended to accomplish the same goal as FSDG, but in a more flexible non-binary way.

Its a ridiculous distinction because a lot of hardware including in supposedly free devices have proprietary firmware. The difference is if you install them in something like a linux-firmware package or if they are embedded into the hardware.

By all means I will agree that hardware designs should be free, but you aren't making any progress towards that, you're just shoving the issue under the rug.

Well of course we don't do much for hardware. We distribute software in a pointedly hardware-agnostic way, unlike, say, System76 + PopOS. Still, we'd like to think we are helping, if only to drag the user-hostile computing out into the sunlight. How can you say we are sweeping issues under a rug just because we are not solving them? What we are doing is pretty much the opposite: any user who loads up linux-libre kernel and realizes a network card stopped working is forced to face the proprietary hardware/software issue. Please consider also that a huge part of this issue is the manufacturer itself: any manufacturer who refuses to provide a libre driver and/or shrouds the hardware chipset in secrecy is a shady dealer. Me and you can disagree all day on this one, but the fact remains that many users feel exactly the same way as either of us, and anywhere in between, and so more distro choice is a good thing.

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The issues are being sweeped under the rug because in the end you still are running proprietary firmware, its just not in plain sight and users who are not so informed may take this to mean there is no proprietary firmware and that there is no issue to fix. Additionally this comes at a great convenience cost without any real ethical gains.

A better approach would be to directly change the malicious practices by hardware manufacturers. Yes, this is easier said than done...

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I just wanted to point out that Freenix isn't only focusing on removing firmware, but any non-libre software. Many of the recent posts on this thread seem to be stuck on this firmware aspect, but that's just one part of what Freenix does.

I do agree that removing firmware doesn't really solve the firmware that's already being used that isn't loaded by the OS, but there's nothing Freenix can do about that. They are doing what they can by minimizing attack vectors by ensuring all software that is under the user's control is open source and easily auditable, and that includes not including firmware that is loaded by the OS.

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Yeah, sure! As if they care. Please look at the following link to see how much care those pseudo-commies who love to abuse the South-American Marxists revolutionary words, about their own users:

GNU Linux-Libre 4.16 Released, Won't Warn You About Spectre/Meltdown Microcode Updates

BTW, did you heard of Cuba Libre? The name Ernesto "Che" Guevara says something to you? But the one of Fidel Castro?

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2qweasd. Так я не понял, что насчёт скрипта? Будем запиливать во freenix или нет?

Sure, actually I drink too much of it on vacation in Cuba. Slackware libre is another nice cocktail I guess. What's the recipe


Cheers

English is the language of this forum. Please adhere to the rules of engagement.

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You don't need microcode updates as Spectre/Meltdown can be mitigated completely by software. Right from Google...

Variant 1 (Spectre) - Requires recompilation
Variant 2 (Spectre) - Requires microcode update -OR- software mitigation (like retpoline)
Variant 3 (Meltdown) - Requires patching the OS (KPTI)

Variant 2 is the only one that can be mitigated with microcode updates, but you don't NEED that updated microcode to protect yourself. So, assuming you're using an OS that has proper fixes in GCC and the kernel was compiled with retpoline, a Linux-Libre kernel should not need any microcode updates to ensure it is protected from Variant 2. Variant 3 (Meltdown) is covered with KPTI and Variant 1 requires recompilation of software, but microcode doesn't affect that.

Now, what if you're on a distro that hasn't made the required changes to enable retpoline? Well, then worrying about warning messages is the least of your problems. And if you aren't aware you're affected by at least Spectre and possibly Meltdown, then you likely aren't one to pay any mind to warnings spit out by the kernel. But that's all we're talking about... removing warnings. Let's be honest... those who are running a libre system are probably well aware of Spectre/Meltdown and that there might be microcode updates that can fix one of the variants. They don't need kernel warnings.

And what the libre-kernel does with their error messages has absolutely nothing to with what Freenix is doing for Slackware. Freenix is providing a libre experience of Slackware. They aren't the so-called "pseudo-commies" that are hiding messages from users, they're simply removing non-libre software from Slackware. It is up to the users if they want to have that experience or not.

It certainly isn't something I'm willing to run, but I do understand the reasoning for those who desire to run only libre software when able. I don't see why you care so much what others do to their own computers. It's not like this is forcing you to run a firmware free or even a completely libre system.

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...echo of time... :-)

We already have a build script for the kernel: https://freenix.net/fxp/freeslack64-14.2/source/fxp/build/linux-libre/


It is different from the Slackware script in several important ways. We make an effort to install files in a way that would not collide with the upstream kernel, for users who are doing a manual cleanup. We also produce a single package containing huge, generic, and modules, because we thought about this very thoroughly, and we cannot imagine a practical scenario where separating these would be useful. The memory footprint, in particular, is highly unlikely to become an issue as we are going forward

The adepts of GNU Linux-libre use a speech borrowed from the slang of South American Marxists. Starting with their obsessively repeated "libre".

The Spanish word "libre" (EN: "free") represents fundamental the base of South American Marxism, and the concept first appeared in the speeches of Che Guevara, referring about "Cuba Libre" as the objectives of Cuban Revolution.

Then there was "Venezuela Libre", "Guatemala Libre" and many other "Libre" countries and places in South America.

You may ask, "free of what?" Well, free of the American exploitation and intervention, always acting behind the corrupt governments, at least in their opinion.

Because all South American Marxist Revolutions was essentially anti-American, starting with Che Guevara and the Cuban Revolution.

That's why seeing you using the word "libre" and knowing you are American, and even working for the USA governement, I felt the need for facepalms, and permit me to translate proper for you, of what you just said:

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You can also add that each of these South American revolutions had the main purpose of overthrowing the local dictator, supposedly hand in hand with the greedy Americans ...

So, the "Slackware Libre" Revolution against who is?