The only license you’ll ever need! lol
I’m not sure they actually make that claim. I had a discussion about that with someone from FSF and we touched on that topic. I hope i still can find that mail. As he pointed out some interesting differences between hard and software that make it very difficult.
I remember how they helped me to make a Pro-audio soundcard work by formulating the right questions to ask to the manufacturer, that resulted in a perfect working soundcard.
At first the manufacturer (not going to say the brand) had no ears for making sound come out of a non winmac OS. But somehow we managed to explain and get the message across and make it work. And i’m greatfull that this manufacturer gave me back my freedom to use the hardware that i paid for on a non winmac machine.
BTW this soundcard does NOT work anylonger on ANY modern winmac but it does work on all Ubuntu flavours. So i consider that as a huge win for my freedom.
Thats one of my personal experiences, it was a bit of a battle to get this done. But it’s still going strong.
But i think you want me to mention some bigger things. I’ll have to look them up myself.
I now think FreeBIOS and .OFD but i’ll try to find something thats closer to Maslow.
I’m about to go home, i’ll answer the other question later
That’s the answer that I’ve seen for why closed code in ROM is acceptable, but
close code in flash or uploaded by a driver isn’t.
Personally, I think they should be going a different direction.
Code running on the main CPU needs to be open.
Code running on some other chip in the system needs to have open (well defined)
interfaces, but it doesn’t matter nearly as much if your modem is running FOSS
software or not.
Yes, you can have corner cases where a second chip in the system has full
control over your memory and can (and does) tinker with it (a problem in cell
phones in particular), but if you start to consider the system non-free because
of this, you end up where you declare that no system with an Intel CPU can
possibly be free because the CPU has microcode on it and you don’t get the
source to that microcode.
That level of paranoia is suitable for the NSA, but the NSA isn’t then stupid
enough to decide that microcode burned into ROM is better than microcode that
they load.
doing some digging
https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/free-bios.html
so they consider something in ROM not to be a problem, but that exact same code
in FLASH (or downloaded by a driver) is a problem.
So far, not too terribly bad, but there was a open hardware phone project that
added a ROM chip specifically to get the FSF endorsement, and the FSF went along
ith it.
FreeBIOS is a perfect example of them taking credit for other people’s work. The
project existed for a long time (under a couple of different names) and made
BIOS for lots of devices, but now the FSF makes people think they dreamed it up
and wrote it.
what’s .ofd? are you thinking the Open Document Format? The FSF was a minor
player in that.
Here i disagree, FSF sets very clear boundries when it comes to those four freedoms, and when those come into danger they simply have to keep those boundries in place, if they move those boundries back then they put everything in danger.
Stallman seems to be a very difficult man, but in fact to stick to the basics is his biggest power.
He stands for freedom. Thats actually a rare thing in todays society.
Philosophy Freedom and ethics are not an easy thing. Add, DRM, Patent law that are driven by big industry in the mix and you get a very complex playground. 4 simple freedoms (human rights) and corporate players can’t simply respect those, then we NEED an FSF to have at least those freedoms. Without FSF we would not have any of those, the industry just would have just done whatever they wanted.
In OSHW i dont really see anything that specifies how they respect ANY freedom
In fact the only mention of the word FREE is not even about freedom but about free distribution.
Ok they mention FSF and Bruce Perens, but that does not specify anything.
I’m not saying the OSHW license is all bad, it’s pretty good, but it could be better when it comes to freedom. OSHW (and also CERN) licence grant more feedoms to corporate manufacturers to grab a communities work without having to give anything back to that community.
I’ll have to read up if any of that has changed as its almost 3 years ago when i last looked into his at that level, and law speak in todays world is just way to political.
Anyway, having an FSF endorsement on top of a reasonable good licence would be a good thing.
I hope this is seen as a discussion, it’s not an attack, I still have to learn a lot about all this.
Though I am aware that my mindset is on the same page as Mr. Stallman when it comes to those four freedoms. Stallman however has things much more clear then i have, whenever i think that he got it wrong, and dive deeper into it i always discover that he had the right reasons. Eventhough it gets him into situations that kinda suck. But he keeps standing strong for those freedoms.
And sure it hurts.
As i’m writing this i realise more and more how little i know still i’m all the way behind those for freedoms. But again, for hardware it’s different then for software, One of the things is that software can be copies at no cost and distributed at low cost. And that hardware is very expensive.
And the startup costs. For a tiny PCB it’s not that high but it still adds up once you do a production run.
I’m again looking at the lwn article now and i will read it once more after i have read all the new posts here on the forum. I see there are indeed a lot of valid issues. But i’t not clear yet how those issues are there because any of the for freedoms.
ROM updates:
My router needs regular updates, and i as user can do this and so can others
Indeed i have also some devices that are not build to do this and have no easy way to update.
Still I would give it a try if i can find a good manual. It’s up to the manufacturer to make this more easy instead of making it impossible.
I’m not sure I got your point correct. I’ll do some reaseach on the FSF site on this.
FreeBIOS, i never had the idea that FSF created it, but FSF indeed does a lot to make people aware of it.
FSF is indeed a minor player in .odf, but they still are the ones who made a diffrence, without FSF .odf would have been pushed out by that M$ office entity and that would have taken away a freedom or 3 from us. And we would have been forced to ALWAYS write in crappy M$ office stuff.
I don’t have any Microsoft machines, and if i write a doc to my government i write it in ODF. And it’s up to them how they open it. 
I don’t let them tell me to write it in .doc. I don’t have .doc ware. I rather spend my money on other things.
In that regard i can say that i’m more free then the ones who use .doc.
I hope this makes my point a bit more visible when it comes to the respect of freedom.
I choose freedom even when it makes things less easy.
It’s more conveinient to choose a ‘less respectfull’ license. But as we all claim to live in a free world, we can make a difference to stand for those freedoms, and not let corporate bullshit tell us otherwise. Now I sound a bit agressive, but this is to get to that point.
Freedom matters. Freedom is in the little shit. The little shit that corporate entities brush under the carpet.
Still i wish there would be a better way to choose freedom, but all the better ways are already done away by corporate actions. I cannot change that, RMS probably can with a little more of our support.
If that is possible then it would be nice if we could get that endorsement.
And still with all respect to all the people who have their issues with FSF. Those issues are real and we should also find answers for those.
I realise that I’m not leaving much room eventhough i try. But the four freedoms (5 actually) really make a difference for the people.
Here i disagree, FSF sets very clear boundries when it comes to those four freedoms, and when those come into danger they simply have to keep those boundries in place, if they move those boundries back then they put everything in danger.
Stallman seems to be a very difficult man, but in fact to stick to the basics is his biggest power.
He stands for freedom. Thats actually a rare thing in todays society.Philosophy Freedom and ethics are not an easy thing. Add, DRM, Patent law that are driven by big industry in the mix and you get a very complex playground. 4 simple freedoms (human rights) and corporate players can’t simply respect those, then we NEED an FSF to have at least those freedoms. Without FSF we would not have any of those, the industry just would have just done whatever they wanted.
In OSHW i dont really see anything that specifies how they respect ANY freedom
In fact the only mention of the word FREE is not even about freedom but about free distribution.
#1 all documentation must be included, documentation must be able to ve modified
and redistributed
note that here they are better than the FSF which doesn’t
allow modification of their documentation
#3 all software needed for operation must be availble (or documenation of the
interfaces such that software could be replaced)
again, better than the FSF which doesn’t require any documentation
#4 must allow derivitive works, including sales of products made by others
#5 free redistribution
#7 no discrimination against people or groups
#8 no discrimination against fields of endevor
#9 distribution of licenses (no need to involve the original people to give 3rd
parties the same rights)
#10 license must not be specific to a product
#11 license must not restrict other hardware or software
#12 license must be technology neutral
That sure looks like a lot of freedom to me. What is missing?
also see the original documents and discussion at
https://freedomdefined.org/OSHW
while it doesn’t explicitly call out the ‘four freedoms’, it seems to me that it
covers them quite well.
and the other items
#2 must specify if anything is not covered by the license
#6 license can require giving credit to the original developers
look very reasonable to me.
I’m not saying the OSHW license is all bad, it’s pretty good, but it could be
better when it comes to freedom. OSHW (and also CERN) licence grant more
feedoms to corporate manufacturers to grab a communities work without having
to give anything back to that community.
the GPL doesn’t require that a company using the software give anything back
either.
the OSHW requirements allow for both copyleft (where the license requires
giving back) and BSD (no give-back required) licenses. That seems very
reasonable to me.
FSF is indeed a minor player in .odf, but they still are the ones who made a
diffrence, without FSF .odf would have been pushed out by that M$ office
entity and that would have taken away a freedom or 3 from us. And we would
have been forced to ALWAYS write in crappy M$ office stuff.
I disagree, I was watching closely as that whole situation evolved, the FSF had
very little to do with it. The EFF and Open Document Foundation were the ones
doing things that mattered.
I don’t have any Microsoft machines, and if i write a doc to my government i
write it in ODF. And it’s up to them how they open it.
tell me to write it in .doc. I don’t have .doc ware. I rather spend my money
on other things.In that regard i can say that i’m more free then the ones who use .doc.
I hope this makes my point a bit more visible when it comes to the respect of freedom.
but if you were to start telling people they must not use MS products, that is
making them less free.
I choose freedom even when it makes things less easy.
not for everything. I’ll bet that you don’t refuse to use a cell phone because
it’s “not free enough”, and I know that you don’t refuse to use a web browser
because it’s “not free enough” (Stallman does both, he has others print web
pages for him to read so he can stay ‘pure’
It’s more conveinient to choose a ‘less respectfull’ license. But as we all
claim to live in a free world, we can make a difference to stand for those
freedoms, and not let corporate bullshit tell us otherwise. Now I sound a bit
agressive, but this is to get to that point.
Freedom matters. Freedom is in the little shit. The little shit that corporate entities brush under the carpet.
Still i wish there would be a better way to choose freedom, but all the better
ways are already done away by corporate actions. I cannot change that, RMS
probably can with a little more of our support.
corporations are not inherently evil and should not be treated as if they are.
What exactly are you trying to prevent? What is it that Maslow doesn’t do that
you think should be done? in your ranting about how good the FSF is, you’ve lost
track of what you are arguing for.
Release stuff under a license, and if corporations comply with that license,
then all should be good. Deciding that even though people and corporations are
complying with the license, that’s no longer good enough is not being
reasonable.
If that is possible then it would be nice if we could get that endorsement.
nothing prevents you asking if they would endorse maslow. I just thing it would
be wrong for the project to go after such an endorsement (especially if they
come back and require changes to get the endorsement)
And still with all respect to all the people who have their issues with FSF. Those issues are real and we should also find answers for those.
I realise that I’m not leaving much room eventhough i try. But the four freedoms (5 actually) really make a difference for the people.
step back and try to rephrase what you are asking for.
it seems like you are asking us to endorse FSF/Stallman when you started off
asking if they would endorse us.
Lets see if I’m still able to understand the license stuff.
I just got some unrelated crap on my plate that drained 90% of my brainpower…
OSHW indeed seems to be ‘better’ in regards of documentation, But that does not make it better when it comes to freedom. And i agree that FSF can learn something from that.
I’m indeed a bit biased toward FSF. And i’m not asking to endorse them. I’m just very much on their side when it comes to freedom. The freedom of the end user.
I guess money is the thing that blurs the lines.
Lets see if i can put that to words.
Developers invest a lot of time, energy, brainpower, to create something wonderful.
And they indeed deserve a lot of respect for that. And they also need to live. And that costs money
Then there are people who like to share ideas to improve the initial work of the devs. They want to use the devs work and learn stuff.
And at the end there are the end users who want to buy a product and own it.
The FSF cares most about those end users. Since all users, devs included, are end users.
Now, GPL is a software license, and since hardware has many differences a GPL license would not cover all of that.
And an OSHW license will indeed be great. except that it does not protect the end users freedoms as good as a GPL does with software.
So I’m not asking to endorse FSF. I’m trying to bring to light that there is a small but important gap.
And even with an FSF endorsement it now is getting more clear to me that this would not really close that gap.
I see I’m making things more complicated.
I’m not saying Maslow is bad in any way, I was trying to cover that gap. The better our freedoms are protected the better it is for everyone.
I’m well aware that this isn’t an easy topic. And for me it’s easy to loose track since i have several conflicting experiences in different backgrounds. All i can say is that where money is involved people bend rules wherever they can to get to that money. And that always tends to harm the freedoms of the enduser.
In music there is DRM that does this. It’s just not easy to explain.
Corporations should always be treated as evil. The dive for profit always wins from ethics.
Corporations have money as a weapon to fight with. No matter how many good people are working there. Once a corporation is under pressure then heads will roll.
As the linear drive for profit is always there,
and that conflicts with the sine wave of natural things.
Not that capitalism is a bad thing. A corporate, non living, entity should just not have more rights then a living human being. That’s what’s the deeper issue.
If we sign our rights away to a corporation, then that’s in a way the same thing as making a deal with the devil. O shit, now i’m going religious.
This topic is just a bit too complicated i guess.
And an OSHW license will indeed be great. except that it does not protect the end users freedoms as good as a GPL does with software.
OSHW is not a license, it’s an endorsement of a product saying that it uses a
license that meets those goals.
Maslow uses GPL (I don’t remember if it’s v2 or v3, but it’s the same one that
GRBL uses, which is really good), and includes all the design documentation
(although some of it is in the form of videos and forum discussions), and it’s
all available, so anything we don’t comply with in OSHW is probably an
ease-of-finding it type of problem, which we want to fix.
So I’m not asking to endorse FSF. I’m trying to bring to light that there is a small but important gap.
What is the gap that you are seeing? That’s one thing I’m not understanding.
I’m well aware that this isn’t an easy topic. And for me it’s easy to loose
track since i have several conflicting experiences in different backgrounds.
All i can say is that where money is involved people bend rules wherever they
can to get to that money. And that always tends to harm the freedoms of the
enduser.
similarly, sometimes the original creator feels cheated when others use their
work in ways that are fully compliant with the license. They especially seem to
miss the effort needed to take a design into mass production and marketing and
feel that companies doing that work are ‘freeloading’ on their work.
Corporations should always be treated as evil. The dive for profit always wins from ethics.
I hate to tell you this, but Maslow is produced by a coporation (at least if Bar
has any sense).
A Corporation is a way for multiple people to work together with defined ways to
share the money that results, and a limit to the liability of individuals that
participate. Any charity that you like is a corporation.
I have a corporation that I use for consulting and fireworks shows. This
prevents something going wrong when I setup a fireworks show (that I get paid a
few hundred bucks to do) from costing me everything.
Corporations have money as a weapon to fight with.
so do people, and like people, some corporations have lots of money, and others
have almost nothing.
No matter how many good people are working there. Once a corporation is under
pressure then heads will roll.
That’s like saying that when a person is under pressure, they will always break
the law for their convienience.
As the linear drive for profit is always there,
and that conflicts with the sine wave of natural things.
profit doesn’t drive companies any more than money drives individuals. Getting
‘enough’ to survive is a very important driver for individuals and companies.
But once you are at the ‘enough to survive’ level, it doesn’t have to be the
primary driver (and this can mean that when people or companies loose ground,
stopping the slide can be a significant driver)
We all know people for who money is their primary drive, and they tend to be
unpleasent to deal with.
But we also all know people who have other things as their primary drive. They
are making enough money to get along, and are willing to make choices that spend
their time on things other than making money.
The exact same thing happens with companies.
There are a lot of small businesses that are quite happy being the size that
they are, and are willing to do things other than be cut-throat agressive about
money. The stereotypical mom-and-pop corner store is a prime example, they don’t
want to grow to replace the supermarket, and are willing to spend a lot of time
and money to do things other than directly making money.
Not that capitalism is a bad thing. A corporate, non living, entity should
just not have more rights then a living human being. That’s what’s the deeper
issue.
A corporation doesn’t have any more rights than a human. But since a corporation
is just a way for people to work together, people don’t loose their rights
because they are part of a corporation. This is what the US Supreme Court case
was actually about, it wasn’t that “Corporations are People”, it was that
“People don’t loose their rights because they choose to act through a
Corporation. As a result, anything that People can do as an individual, a
Corporation can still do”
Similarly, there is no law that says that a company must maximize shareholder
value at all costs. But there have been successful lawsuits by shareholders that
have accused company officers of misusing company funds. Remember that the
shareholders are the owners of the company, and it’s their money that funds the
company, so it makes sense that they should provide direction for what the
company does with their money.
If we sign our rights away to a corporation, then that’s in a way the same
thing as making a deal with the devil.
Who has asked you to sign any rights away to anyone?
O shit, now i’m going religious.
Yes, you are.
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So if OSHW isn’t a license then it’s nothing, and that would then make the CERN hardware license at least something?
This makes it even harder to understand.
The problem is that a corporation that does not live, has the same rights as a human but a LOT more money and by that way better acces to expensive lawyers, then a poor human being that has signed away some of his rights TO that corporation.
AND thus from that moment on has LESS rights THEN the corporation that he or she works for.
That pretty much counts as evil to me.
Sure a Corporations goal can be perfectly good, in legal matters a corporation becomes a very different puppy. I have had my fair share of that…
Maybe it’s worse in europe. I live in a very small country where most companies are subject of a larger corporation (sometimes multinational). In that case everything ends up in legal crap and does not leave room for working together on anything. Big corporate money just gets rid of annoying human. If have a contract with a corporate entity that contract just will screw you, no matter how much profit that human made for that entity. The one with the most money has better chances to win.
A corporate entity also has the option to use a couple of clever humans combined brain power to get to money. The gap that i see is in this section. And i figured that this FSF endorsement would make that gap smaller. Eventhough it does not close the gap as it is not a license.
So in that sense it doesn’t do all that much.
So.
Since there is no such thing as Free (as in freedom) Hardware it may just not matter then?
And i should just hope that no evil shit happens. That’s fine i guess.
It’s just that in my experience this is just not enough. If there is a gap then that gap will be found.
I know the gap is there, and I try to patch it. But apparently this was not the way to do that.
I’m sure that you and everyone else care enough to not let anything bad happen. So i’ll try to let this rest. so that I free up your brainpower again. I really appreciate this conversation but I feel like having distracted you from other, more fun, stuff.
I will read back a few more times to try and understand your point of view better. Me not having much background in software is also a gap in this case.
I once signed away a few rights to a corporation… Long time ago, and still pay for it… That’s why it’s such a big issue for me. This is different, still I try to prevent bad shit from people who make such a nice project. Maybe my past made me a bit paranoia.
So if OSHW isn’t a license then it’s nothing
The FSF endorcement isn’t a license either, so it’s nothing as well, right?
The OSHW is a way of certifying that you meet (some or all of) the 12 criteria.
Yes, it’s more verbose than ‘four freedoms’, but that’s what happens when you
consider the reality of hardware and a bit of lawyer interference (there’s a
reason why the GPL isn’t just a list of the four freedoms after all)
The problem is that a corporation that does not live, has the same rights as a
human but a LOT more money and by that way better acces to expensive lawyers,
then a poor human being that has signed away some of his rights TO that
corporation.
how many corporations have as much money as George Soros? (or the Kosh brothers
depending on your political leanings), very few.
you keep talking about “signing away rights to corporations”, unless you sign a
(valid) contract, you have not signed away any rights, and if you did sign a
contract, you did so because you valued what you would get from the contract
more than what you give for the contract.
AND thus from that moment on has LESS rights THEN the corporation that he or
she works for.That pretty much counts as evil to me.
so you are arguing that employment is evil? If so, I don’t think we have much
common ground to work from.
Sure a Corporations goal can be perfectly good, in legal matters a corporation becomes a very different puppy. I have had my fair share of that…
Maybe it’s worse in europe. I live in a very small country where most
companies are subject of a larger corporation (sometimes multinational). In
that case everything ends up in legal crap and does not leave room for working
together on anything. Big corporate money just gets rid of annoying human.
If have a contract with a corporate entity that contract just will screw you,
no matter how much profit that human made for that entity. The one with the
most money has better chances to win.A corporate entity also has the option to use a couple of clever humans
combined brain power to get to money.
and why can a person not hire those same ‘couple of clever humans’ the same way?
a corporation doesn’t get money from nothing, it gets money from it’s owners
(actual humans), so those same humans could use the same money to hire people to
get money without a corporation.
Since there is no such thing as Free (as in freedom) Hardware it may just not matter then?
where did you get the idea there is no such thing as free as in freedom
hardware? I keep asking you what’s missing in the 12 points of OHWA, and you
keep talking about how evil companies are.
How can you be compliant with the 12 points of OHWA and do the evil things you
are imagining someone (or some company) doing? what is it that is missing that
if it was added would provide you the freedom you think is missing.
And i should just hope that no evil shit happens. That’s fine i guess.
no, you as a developer, pick a license that embodies what you want to do with
your work. That’s the furthest thing from “just home that no evil… happens”
It’s just that in my experience this is just not enough. If there is a gap then that gap will be found.
I know the gap is there, and I try to patch it. But apparently this was not the way to do that.
WHAT IS THE GAP
you keep saying there is a gap, but you won’t say what that gap is.
I’m sure that you and everyone else care enough to not let anything bad
happen. So i’ll try to let this rest. so that I free up your brainpower again.
I really appreciate this conversation but I feel like having distracted you
from other, more fun, stuff.I will read back a few more times to try and understand your point of view better. Me not having much background in software is also a gap in this case.
I once signed away a few rights to a corporation… Long time ago, and still
pay for it… That’s why it’s such a big issue for me. This is different,
still I try to prevent bad shit from people who make such a nice project.
Maybe my past made me a bit paranoia.
let me put it another way.
relatedto maslow, who has asked you to sign away any rights to anyone (other
than the rights of the GPL for any software you’ve contributed, or the right to
publish your words for things you’ve posted to the forums)?
you obviously see something wrong with what we are currently doing, but I can’t
get you to specify what is wrong.
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So we should all go back to small family farms and 80% of the population engaged in dusk to dawn backbreaking non mechanized labor? What happens to any endeavor that’s larger than what can be done with a handful of people? If you want to go further than a horse will take you, or communicate further than you can yell?
I own and live on a small farm by choice, but even small scale hobby farming is a tough life. And that’s with the products of the evil corporations and visits to the supermarket. Trying to exist in the old style agrarian society was way, way harder
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A corporation is neither good or bad. By the terms of it’s existence, if it is public, it’s behavior is defined by specific goals. Those goals tend to drive them down a predetermined path in most cases. It is not so in every case. Each corporation is a group of people that make decisions about what they are doing as a group.
If you remove the word corporation and just say group you are now talking about our community. This becomes about management.
@bar in another thread where I asked what folks wanted to see @dlang write about asked how to best manage our groups efforts to be productive.
We get to choose. This is organic and often makes and ebb and flow not intended. It is unmanaged at those times or we need to step in.
There are pluses and minuses to every choice.
I want to say I respect everyones work and opinions here even when I don’t agree with them. When and where I push on something it’s because I know it can be better. I don’t have all the answers. In fact I mostly just have a decent recollection of where something is between here and the wiki.
My point is I have been in a very large corporation. At the time I got involved they had a written book of process, reading that book, it was impressive how much they thought out the processes they needed and provided guidance. In a meeting I once said " given the goals of a corporation I can’t align myself with everything this one is doing but of the ones in the world I think this one is trying to do good more than bad."
We are managing things here on a daly basis. There are different types of Management. As a community we are not always as efficient as we could be. We are however more inclusive and in being so might arrive at a different or even better solution then we would if were managed any other way.
I hope this information helps us as a community.
Thank you