Comment by kuhsaft
3 hours ago
A bit aggressive, but understandable.
> If anything, it makes it harder to audit and figure out which firmware version is being run than if the firmware were to be shipped along with the OS.
Yep. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29841267
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For fsflover, what Purism is doing is moving the non-auditable part of the OS onto a separate storage device so that they can claim that the OS is "Fully Auditable" and FSF certified even though the non-auditable and non-free part is mounted into the OS filesystem during boot. It's deceptive marketing and you're spreading that marketing.
Other open mobile OSes aren't trying to hide the fact that there needs to be proprietary components for hardware.
The only thing I concede is that the drivers are FOSS, which is why some performance and functionality is degraded compared to phones using non-free drivers. You could develop an AOSP phone using the same FOSS drivers as well, you'll just have the same issues.
> what Purism is doing is moving the non-auditable part of the OS onto a separate storage device so that they can claim that the OS is "Fully Auditable" and FSF certified even though the non-auditable and non-free part is mounted into the OS filesystem during boot.
Yup, that's part of it.
But remember, even if they didn't do it, there's still a matter of them by using components with internal flash storage for the firmware instead of shipping firmware with the OS and letting the OS upload them. Like that's not a hackjob like the /lib/firmware or /run/firmware stuff or anything, but it's not like it's any more "open" than any other system, if not being a bit more opague. Of course the marketing would still be deceptive then.