Comment by mrexcess
10 days ago
Has he been markedly wrong about any of these positions that he's staked out over the years, from closed hardware to mobile security?
10 days ago
Has he been markedly wrong about any of these positions that he's staked out over the years, from closed hardware to mobile security?
No, and you can tell how much this vexes particular individuals and institutions because the only kind of attack they can bring against him is character assassination, the tool of last resort.
The only thing I've found that RMS is wrong about is defining away firmware-stored-in-flash as "hardware", while getting stuck on firmware blobs loaded into coprocessors indicting whole systems. It appears to be a handwaving distinction formed from previous times - when the distinction didn't really matter, a line had to be drawn somewhere, and being able to do things like declare an entire CDROM as "free software" was a cool goal in and of itself. But these days we could use a much more vibrant definition centered around processor domains and security relationships.
For example I see zero freedom difference between my ath10k with its firmware loaded from disk by libre software, and my x520 with firmware stored in onboard flash. Neither undermines the freedom or security of my workstation user domain, and both are unfree if I get the itch to dig into modifying my network cards.
IIRC "firmware as hardware" only applies if nobody - not you, not the manufacturer - can update it. I.e. your laptop's BIOS is software, the controller in your washing machine is hardware.
Of course, now washing machines connect to the Internet, so the obvious lines have blurred
I recall it being applied to firmware residing in flash, which is most everything these days (truly non-updateable means mask ROM).
Even without the Internet connection, the firmware in your washing machine can be updated whether by service call or DIY by seeing what chip it uses and how it gets programmed.
Which is why I think it makes sense to talk in terms of software freedom for specific devices / security domains. For example, it's perfectly fine to just admit that your washing machine, wifi card, mouse, network switch, etc doesn't respect software freedom, rather than trying to define one's way out of it. And then if and when you do run into an issue that is made frustrating by a lack of software freedom, you can then opt to remedy this.