Comment by digiown
11 hours ago
Guix being a GNU project the purism also doesn't help. Just look at this: https://github.com/nonguix/nonguix
I don't even disagree that nonfree software is bad, but blaming the users who often have no choice in the matter (e.g. drivers) is the wrong way to go.
nonguix is similar to debian's non-free sources. It's also maintained by many of the same contributors to guix. Enabling it is also similar to how you enable it for Debian. I have never seen anyone blamed or shamed for using nonfree drivers by the guix community, which I can say has been a very warm and welcoming community.
it does happen, and it happened to me, too.
but the attitude has been changing recently from active shaming for even mentioning non-free stuff, to passive acceptance of pragmatically pointing a newcomer to nonguix.
It's a little inconvenient but for example my Framework laptop Intel WiFi chip requires a binary blob and I want aware of this. Now that I am, I can make better hardware purchasing decisions. There are plenty of alternatives that don't require that blob and it's the only thing I need from the no free channel.
Are there really a lot of alternative Wifi chips that don't require closed blobs? Do you have a list?
Are they found in any laptop that is reasonably available on the market?
I don't think that Guix is punishing users by not supporting non-libre hardware. They are making a choice in what they develop and anybody of similar mind can join their effort.
The nonguix folks are practical. It just stinks that nothing ships with a Wifi chip that doesn't require nonguix pragmatism.
I really don't think you can gain much realistic freedom going without the blob. The powers that be will never let you have a freely modifiable radio transceiver.
The blob is better viewed as a part of the hardware in this case. What's most likely to happen to get rid of the blob is to just put it on the non-modifiable parts of the device. Viewed in this way, the blob is at least something you can practically inspect, unlike the firmware on the chip itself.
See also the discussion on CPU microcode:
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/info-gnu/2018-04/msg00002...
Open hardware is mostly a lie.
They all run proprietary blobs inside and out. It's ridiculous gatekeeping to say that on the kernel level it's bad, but below it I just put my head in the sand and disregard the millions of lines of closed-source code.