← Back to context

Comment by handedness

3 days ago

> You can have "some debate" on absolutely anything, but that doesn't yet mean it makes any sense.

Sure, but from the fact that anything can be debated it does not follow that any given debate is nonsensical, which is kind of what you did there.

> ...whatever debate you're referring to is unlikely to be held in good faith.

I don't know which is odder, that assertion, or the notion that two completely different security models can't be debated in good faith because they're effectively identical, because of hand-wavy reasons like, "You have communication protocols on top of IOMMUs as well which are subject to exactly the same security considerations as potential exploits in the USB stack..."

Certainly there's some kind of argument to be made that the Librem 5 is relevant to this post as its adherents see it as a viable alternative to iOS and/or Android-based devices. I disagree, but everyone's willing to make different compromises and that's fair.

I only mention that because a contingent of voices as high in volume as they are few in number endlessly shoehorning the Librem 5 into numerous threads no matter how much of a non-sequitur it takes, has me suddenly paying more attention these days to what's coming from the Purism camp. The more I do the more disingenuous the rhetoric seems.

It may just be a coincidence, but for a project with such a fraught history and tarnished reputation, it doesn't do anything to increase my trust in it.

> I only mention that because a contingent of voices as high in volume as they are few in number endlessly shoehorning the Librem 5 into numerous threads no matter how much of a non-sequitur it takes, has me suddenly paying more attention these days to what's coming from the Purism camp. The more I do the more disingenuous the rhetoric seems.

It seems to be mainly fsflover. You can search “Librem 5” messages in HN and it’s flooded with messages by them.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1777075200&dateRange=custom&...

https://hn-wrapped.kadoa.com/fsflover

  • At least I don't reply to every comment about GrapheneOS with "it's not as free as Librem 5 and you have to pay Google, and you have to rely on blobs running on the main CPU" etc. This is exactly what the GrapheneOS crowd is doing with my comments.

> no matter how much of a non-sequitur it takes

I explained in the other comment why I thing that GNU/Linux phones are relevant, where I posted. You can discuss my arguments, but you can't just dismiss them all with a single general wording like this.

> a project with such a fraught history and tarnished reputation

Another unsubstantiated attack on a free software project from the GrapheneOS crowd, with no links or argumentation.

I have to admit that I had a kind of knee-jerk reaction there, as this "debate" is very often brought up in FUD pieces without much substance behind it.