Re: Rethinking the design of xwidgets

Re: Rethinking the design of xwidgets

[Jean Louis]

* Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com> [2020-10-20 16:50]:
> Consider Intel and Purism. What considers me, they are both US based
> private business (I don't know how much US or private Intel is, but I
> guess). So what we are doing is exchanging a blob for company A for a
> blob of company B. Blob from B should disable blob from A. How do I know
> B is not run secretely by some goverment organisation that likes
> to spy on it's own citizens and foreign ones. Just recently we learned
> there was a supposedly independent Swiss company that sold a
> cryptography machines to goverments all over the world. It turned out it
> was secretely collaborating with CIA that gott keys to decrypt
> everyone's secrets :D. Russians never bought it, but some other
> countries did.

You cannot know.

Difference between Intel and Purism is way too big, Purism is
providing fully free operating system that is somehow verified and
endorsed by the Free Software Foundation. Those are reasons why Purism
gets trust points.

Intel is already known to spy on millions, there are reasons not to
trust Intel.

Trust in the second definition in Wordnet dictionary is following:

2. (3) reliance, trust -- (certainty based on past experience; "he
wrote the paper with considerable reliance on the work of other
scientists"; "he put more trust in his own two legs than in the gun")

What we know about Intel about past experiences? Huge insecurity. By
having MINIX operating system in the CPU, doing what it wants, I do
not know what type of true control I have over my computing.

What we know about Purism about past experiences? They are providing
full free operating system, liberating people, giving them control
over their computing.

You can observe what groups are doing, you can hire independent
security researcher to verify the software, if that is expensive, you
may rely on groups by looking what are they doing.

> Idea of blobs is bad; and Dr. Richard S. is completelycorrect about
> blobs not being acceptable. But then, we need to live in this world
> as it is; so we need a sustianable solution for the future. I don't
> know if limiting what Emacs can do on capabilities of a machine from
> the past is a best strategy; but I am not very wise, and certainly
> did not do enough research and thinking in the area, so this is just
> my ramblings and consideration; unfortunately I have no answers
> myself.

What I can see over last 20 years, there was no free operating system
for phones, today we have several, we have free operating systems for
computers, and many proprietary software liberated, even huge
corporation like Microsoft contributes to free software. Many social
improvements sprung up from free software movement.

Today after 20 years, we do not need to live in this world "as it is",
we know we can improve conditions, even by only promoting set of
principles. And it requires uncompromised stubbornes. Today we are
exposed to spying more than in old times.

Sv: Rethinking the design of xwidgets

[arthur miller]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 5162 bytes --]


> You cannot know.

Exactly. That was a point I was making. One can not know. But  we have to;know. There
is no way around knowing facts., and that iswhy we can not have blobs​; and that is why
I said RMS is completely correct about that.

There is big difference between a fact and trust. Facts are true because of their
intrinsic nature, regardless of our preferance; wether we like that thruth or not.
Trust is something one choose by preferance. It can (and should) be based on facts, but
it does not have to, it can be based on emotions, wishes and maybe other subjective
opinion.

Facts can be verified; trust does not have to. So no; trust is not good enough.

For the rest your post; I do understand that you value Free and open source software, just
as I do, and I definitely share your opinion about things improving (search the archives).

However I feel that it was misstake to construct the argument I did, I should have known
that people will missunderstand it; I really ment to construct a philosophical argument to
point out how little we really know, not to compare Intel vs Purism per se. I used names as
illustration, I should have used X and Y. I certainly don't mean harm to neither Intel nor Purism,
discussion who is bad guys and who is good guys certainly does not belong to emacs-devel
so I appologize for that.

Furthermore if you are referreing to Prism when you say Intel is known to spy on millions,  then I
am think that  probablyany company approached (ordered) by the goverment would probably do
the same. Lets restrain from using company names here; and yes rms is probably correct, this
discussion is getting out of hand, so maybe better to continue it off  the list.
________________________________
Från: Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support>
Skickat: den 20 oktober 2020 22:11
Till: Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com>
Kopia: Dmitry Gutov <dgutov@yandex.ru>; eliz@gnu.org <eliz@gnu.org>; Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>; ak@akirakyle.com <ak@akirakyle.com>; emacs-tangents@gnu.org <emacs-tangents@gnu.org>
Ämne: Re: Rethinking the design of xwidgets

* Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com> [2020-10-20 16:50]:
> Consider Intel and Purism. What considers me, they are both US based
> private business (I don't know how much US or private Intel is, but I
> guess). So what we are doing is exchanging a blob for company A for a
> blob of company B. Blob from B should disable blob from A. How do I know
> B is not run secretely by some goverment organisation that likes
> to spy on it's own citizens and foreign ones. Just recently we learned
> there was a supposedly independent Swiss company that sold a
> cryptography machines to goverments all over the world. It turned out it
> was secretely collaborating with CIA that gott keys to decrypt
> everyone's secrets :D. Russians never bought it, but some other
> countries did.

You cannot know.

Difference between Intel and Purism is way too big, Purism is
providing fully free operating system that is somehow verified and
endorsed by the Free Software Foundation. Those are reasons why Purism
gets trust points.

Intel is already known to spy on millions, there are reasons not to
trust Intel.

Trust in the second definition in Wordnet dictionary is following:

2. (3) reliance, trust -- (certainty based on past experience; "he
wrote the paper with considerable reliance on the work of other
scientists"; "he put more trust in his own two legs than in the gun")

What we know about Intel about past experiences? Huge insecurity. By
having MINIX operating system in the CPU, doing what it wants, I do
not know what type of true control I have over my computing.

What we know about Purism about past experiences? They are providing
full free operating system, liberating people, giving them control
over their computing.

You can observe what groups are doing, you can hire independent
security researcher to verify the software, if that is expensive, you
may rely on groups by looking what are they doing.

> Idea of blobs is bad; and Dr. Richard S. is completelycorrect about
> blobs not being acceptable. But then, we need to live in this world
> as it is; so we need a sustianable solution for the future. I don't
> know if limiting what Emacs can do on capabilities of a machine from
> the past is a best strategy; but I am not very wise, and certainly
> did not do enough research and thinking in the area, so this is just
> my ramblings and consideration; unfortunately I have no answers
> myself.

What I can see over last 20 years, there was no free operating system
for phones, today we have several, we have free operating systems for
computers, and many proprietary software liberated, even huge
corporation like Microsoft contributes to free software. Many social
improvements sprung up from free software movement.

Today after 20 years, we do not need to live in this world "as it is",
we know we can improve conditions, even by only promoting set of
principles. And it requires uncompromised stubbornes. Today we are
exposed to spying more than in old times.

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 7995 bytes --]

Re: Sv: Rethinking the design of xwidgets

[Jean Louis]

* arthur miller <arthur.miller@live.com> [2020-10-21 02:25]:
> 
> > You cannot know.
> 
> Exactly. That was a point I was making. One can not know. But we
> have to;know. There is no way around knowing facts., and that iswhy
> we can not have blobs​; and that is why I said RMS is completely
> correct about that.

When I started using GNU 1999, I first had to learn about free
software, and later I found that Linux kernel does not work on every
computer, because not all device drivers were written for those
computers. So I have assumed that Linux developers are writing those
device drivers, which is also true. I was not informed about
proprietary non-free firmware files.

That I found way too late in 2016, and then switched to FSF endorsed
fully free distributions.

A free software system should teach people about free software, it
should designate:

- that BIOS is not free, that OS does not replace non-free stuff in
  BIOS, and that there are ways on specific devices to replace
  such. This warning should come with every boot, if somebody would
  ask me. Intel ME and MINIX inside have been huge security breach and
  still is, there are problems with memory and that all could have
  been as well intentional.

- that some devices will not work, because for such do not exist free
  software firmware files, that should also be made known to users
  publicly and all those notices should be very very clear.

- that users do not have control over computing on those devices or computers.

It is not enough to say: if you wish that your device works, just load
the non-free firmware.

As such simple statement does not tell the user that user does not have
control over his computing if such firmware is enabled.

> There is big difference between a fact and trust. Facts are true because of their
> intrinsic nature, regardless of our preferance; wether we like that thruth or not.
> Trust is something one choose by preferance. It can (and should) be based on facts, but
> it does not have to, it can be based on emotions, wishes and maybe other subjective
> opinion.

That is right, we do not and cannot decide for people to which group
or which software to trust. It is developing socially. Obviously that
is why there are various distributions.

Those who trust Archlinux are in slightly different group, those
trusting fully free FSF endorsed distributions are in slightly
different group, those will think more about freedom issues and
safety for users, there will be no references to proprietary software.

> Facts can be verified; trust does not have to. So no; trust is not
> good enough.

Users cannot verify facts in general, that is privilege only for small
group of good programmers knowing it all, as nobody alone can verify
what is going on in the system. There is no central authority to make
sure of that, even in past there were various organizations, maybe
also now, but they will not ensure of free software, for example Linux
Foundation is probably run and sponsored by big companies who have
slightly different interests.

Linus Torvalds have slightly different interests then Linux-libre
maintainers, there are reasons for both, and it is up to people to
decide what is more beneficial for them, like you said, based on
emotion it can as well be, based on liking Linus, it can be. It need
not be factual.

> However I feel that it was misstake to construct the argument I did, I should have known
> that people will missunderstand it; I really ment to construct a philosophical argument to
> point out how little we really know, not to compare Intel vs Purism per se. I used names as
> illustration, I should have used X and Y. I certainly don't mean harm to neither Intel nor Purism,
> discussion who is bad guys and who is good guys certainly does not belong to emacs-devel
> so I appologize for that.

Thank you, I understand it now better.

> Furthermore if you are referreing to Prism when you say Intel is known to spy on millions,  then I
> am think that  probablyany company approached (ordered) by the goverment would probably do
> the same. Lets restrain from using company names here; and yes rms is probably correct, this
> discussion is getting out of hand, so maybe better to continue it
> off  the list.

I have changed the Cc: to emacs-tangents@gnu.org for that reason.

Jean

Re: Sv: Rethinking the design of xwidgets

[Arthur Miller]

Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support> writes:

> * arthur miller <arthur.miller@live.com> [2020-10-21 02:25]:
>> 
>> > You cannot know.
>> 
>> Exactly. That was a point I was making. One can not know. But we
>> have to;know. There is no way around knowing facts., and that iswhy
>> we can not have blobs​; and that is why I said RMS is completely
>> correct about that.
>
> When I started using GNU 1999, I first had to learn about free
> software, and later I found that Linux kernel does not work on every
> computer, because not all device drivers were written for those
> computers. So I have assumed that Linux developers are writing those
> device drivers, which is also true. I was not informed about
> proprietary non-free firmware files.
>
> That I found way too late in 2016, and then switched to FSF endorsed
> fully free distributions.
>
> A free software system should teach people about free software, it
> should designate:
>
> - that BIOS is not free, that OS does not replace non-free stuff in
>   BIOS, and that there are ways on specific devices to replace
>   such. This warning should come with every boot, if somebody would
>   ask me. Intel ME and MINIX inside have been huge security breach and
>   still is, there are problems with memory and that all could have
>   been as well intentional.
>
> - that some devices will not work, because for such do not exist free
>   software firmware files, that should also be made known to users
>   publicly and all those notices should be very very clear.
>
> - that users do not have control over computing on those devices or computers.
>
> It is not enough to say: if you wish that your device works, just load
> the non-free firmware.
>
> As such simple statement does not tell the user that user does not have
> control over his computing if such firmware is enabled.
>
>> There is big difference between a fact and trust. Facts are true because of their
>> intrinsic nature, regardless of our preferance; wether we like that thruth or not.
>> Trust is something one choose by preferance. It can (and should) be based on facts, but
>> it does not have to, it can be based on emotions, wishes and maybe other subjective
>> opinion.
Then we have started to use GNU/Linux around same time. My very first
distro was Red Hat 5.1, I think KDE was somewhere in 1.2 or something.
Got it from a magazine CD, and I had luck to read all that about drivers
and Free software before installation. Back than it was much harder to
get drivers to work and all that. I think my graphic card was TNT2 if
remember well. I got it that card so I could play Quake, AOE and
Starcraft. I also had to buy 128 meg of RAM extra.

> That is right, we do not and cannot decide for people to which group
> or which software to trust. It is developing socially. Obviously that
> is why there are various distributions.
Partially. There are also other issues with "trust" that I wasn't
touching on because of the lengthy mail, and I was at work typing from
the phone.

Short version: if trust worked we wouldn't need laws, and lawyers. There
wouldn't be hurt feelings and wars. If you wish we can discuss more
about trust, but I am not sure we need to.

Another problem with trust is the ignorance baked into it. We can be
lack information for some reason, we can trust on false premisse either
by an honest misstake or for a malicious reason, or it can be because of
incomplete information.

Yet another important issue is that trust based on previous experience,
as you described in your first response, does not leave space for people
to make misstakes.

Companies are just entities, dead things that made decisions. Decisions
are made of people, it is people that make misstakes. People fail for
various reasons. Amongs any population there will be certain amount of
geniouses, certain amount of people with some condition etc. It is
normal, people should be allowed to fail to. And they should be also
allowed to correct their misstakes and continues to become a part of
society. That makes for a batter society. It is also not a guarantee
they will not make a misstake in the future. Saying that company X has
history of this and company Y has history of that, means that people can
not change and are not allowed to correct themselves. Companies do hire
other people, people come and go etc.

>> Facts can be verified; trust does not have to. So no; trust is not
>> good enough.
>
> Users cannot verify facts in general, that is privilege only for small
> group of good programmers knowing it all, as nobody alone can verify
> what is going on in the system. There is no central authority to make
> sure of that, even in past there were various organizations, maybe
> also now, but they will not ensure of free software, for example Linux
> Foundation is probably run and sponsored by big companies who have
> slightly different interests.
Well, yes indeed. There is always a theory and there is a practice :-)
Philosophical discussion is often about theory, not about practice.
Anyway, if blob had source, and there was enough reason to look at it,
there would probably be someone to do it.

Company Y might be really honest about their intention, both companies
can be honest, why wouldn't they after all? I am of firm believe that
most people are actually good people. However, if company X believes
they need to protect their trade secret they have no choice but to give
an opaque blob. Unless they give company Y access to the source of the
blob, company Y can not know what is in the blob, they can just "trust"
the X, but despite all their honest intentions, there is not much more
they can do. There is also no guarantee that the blob is correct, i.e.
no bugs, and there is no way to know if there are other blobs hidden.
Maybe ME is just a honeypot, how do we know there are no other secrets
in there? We can't know unfortuantely because we don't have acces of the
source of CPU themselves either.

So blob does not really solve the problem; it isn't sustainable; it is
not a general solution, at least not good enough. Neither is holding
back to year 2006, since one day that strategy will wear out. The world
will be left without old CPUs. We need more sustainable solution. That
is why I asked if those things work without network. I am not so
knowledgable about ME extensions or security in general, but maybe there
are people who are.

Sorry for lengthy mails

Best regards and thanks for your understanding.

/arthur

Re: Rethinking the design of xwidgets

[Arthur Miller]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>   > So I really don't know what is sustainability in refusing to use newer
>   > CPUs?
>
> I agree that is a problem.  But we can't win by surrendering.
I agree with you that surrender is not an option! And I admire your
effort to eat "your own dog food"; I am not that disciplined as you are,
my computer has nvidia card in it; rest is free. 

But we have to choose a fight wisely. Obviously, we can't win fight to
convince the world not to buy latest CPUs (even AMD seems to have a
version of this), nor the lastest GPUs. Nvidia even publicly apologized
for not being able to produce many enough of their expensive 3080s. I
can't even afford one, even if I wanted :D.

> I am hoping that the various efforts to make newer, freer computers
> will fix this before too late.
Oh, you were to optimistic about people! Convinience and greed are
mighty drivers, we should never under estimate those. :-) I don't know,
I am half-joking about, but humans do tend to choose the path of lesser
friction and worse evil. Probably are many more aware of the problem,
but they simply choose between "lesser" evil: the power of new
technology to solve the real-life problems, vs the problem of this
techonology to control them. I think the problem is underestimated by
many unfortuantely. Yuval Noah Harari has many correct ones about the
technology and future.

> However, could we please move this discussion off emacs-devel?
> It's not on topic here.
Of course, I appologize!

I realized that you are completely correct just like few
hours later. Sorry for not doing it earlier. Jean-Lous already moved it
to tangents.

Hardware respecting your freedom

[Jean Louis]

* Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com> [2020-10-21 15:00]:
> Then we have started to use GNU/Linux around same time. My very first
> distro was Red Hat 5.1, I think KDE was somewhere in 1.2 or something.
> Got it from a magazine CD, and I had luck to read all that about drivers
> and Free software before installation. Back than it was much harder to
> get drivers to work and all that. I think my graphic card was TNT2 if
> remember well. I got it that card so I could play Quake, AOE and
> Starcraft. I also had to buy 128 meg of RAM extra.

I was playing games on Windoze and liked it, it gave me hours of
pleasure. And I used GNU/Linux first on double boot system. Then
sooner or later I have realized that it has no sense, and I would need
to fully switch to GNU/Linux, and that would mean, I would need to
forget about some games, I would need to forget about some heavily
used programs.

So then I have sit down, opened the book about Red Hat in Germany
language, it was published by some DATA company maybe Data Becker, I
do not remember, and I looked into it which programs could replace my
routine and my programs I used so heavily. It was not an easy choice
and I can remember me actually sweating before the decision to
completely remove Windoze.

That was 1999.

I think KDE was not really free at the time.

I have also found that almost all the software on Red Hat CD or Suse
CD was free software, only few pieces inserted by those companies were
non-free and for that reason all the CD was spoiled, it could not be
just duplicated and given away, that was a trap they tried to
impose. I could distribute software from CD by duplicating it, but I
would need to remove some pieces, which seemd hard at the time.

So I just neglected it, and made copies any way, and gave to friends.

> Short version: if trust worked we wouldn't need laws, and lawyers. There
> wouldn't be hurt feelings and wars. If you wish we can discuss more
> about trust, but I am not sure we need to.

There is no absolute principle in general. 

> Yet another important issue is that trust based on previous experience,
> as you described in your first response, does not leave space for people
> to make misstakes.

I have staff members, and I track their execution of projects by using
Org files. I can know if staff member is reporting daily for last 12
months, and if report is lacking today, I know there is something
wrong, and it would not matter nothing if reports are lacking for some
days, I would not say anything, I would know it is genuine obstacle.

If staff member starts making reports but cannot really keep up with
the simple routine, then I know this one is not putting attention.

Thus I am building my experience on facts and have to make conclusions
in future based on past experience of facts.

> Companies are just entities, dead things that made decisions. Decisions
> are made of people, it is people that make misstakes. People fail for
> various reasons. Amongs any population there will be certain amount of
> geniouses, certain amount of people with some condition etc. It is
> normal, people should be allowed to fail to. And they should be also
> allowed to correct their misstakes and continues to become a part of
> society.

That is right.

For this reason we do not fire people for mistakes. We fire people for
crimes. Maybe it is crime to repeat same mistake so many times over
and over again when person fully understood instructions and when it
is clear what is disallowed to do.

> That makes for a batter society. It is also not a guarantee they
> will not make a misstake in the future. Saying that company X has
> history of this and company Y has history of that, means that people
> can not change and are not allowed to correct themselves. Companies
> do hire other people, people come and go etc.

I agree on that, and even more than you think based on these
writings. 

> Anyway, if blob had source, and there was enough reason to look at it,
> there would probably be someone to do it.

I just ask myself is it totally hard to get internals of those chips
and reverse engineer that software and make free software.

> Company Y might be really honest about their intention, both companies
> can be honest, why wouldn't they after all? I am of firm believe that
> most people are actually good people. However, if company X believes
> they need to protect their trade secret they have no choice but to give
> an opaque blob.

There is free culture movement now that is derivative from free
software philosophy and I am in agreement with it. For example, our
company have hired an engineer to write a technical drawing for a
machine, and that machine drawing have been made under the GNU FDL. We
can sell the drawing, but we do not want to make obstacle that people
cannot replicate the same machine themselves.

Many companies would benefit positively if they would not protect
those chips.

> So blob does not really solve the problem; it isn't sustainable; it is
> not a general solution, at least not good enough. Neither is holding
> back to year 2006, since one day that strategy will wear out. The world
> will be left without old CPUs. We need more sustainable solution. That
> is why I asked if those things work without network. I am not so
> knowledgable about ME extensions or security in general, but maybe there
> are people who are.

There are solutions, there are today more free hardware computers then
before. It is coming due to increased awareness, and that social
movement is also derivative from GNU free software philosophy and
writings of RMS, FSF hardware endorsements and similar public actions.

See: https://www.fsf.org/resources/hw

and

https://ryf.fsf.org/

And there are those Talos computers, there is Purism notebook, but I
think they did not finish fully the liberation, and there are some
computers that are crowd funded.

Jean

Re: Hardware respecting your freedom

[Arthur Miller]

Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support> writes:

> * Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com> [2020-10-21 15:00]:
>> Then we have started to use GNU/Linux around same time. My very first
>> distro was Red Hat 5.1, I think KDE was somewhere in 1.2 or something.
>> Got it from a magazine CD, and I had luck to read all that about drivers
>> and Free software before installation. Back than it was much harder to
>> get drivers to work and all that. I think my graphic card was TNT2 if
>> remember well. I got it that card so I could play Quake, AOE and
>> Starcraft. I also had to buy 128 meg of RAM extra.
>
> I was playing games on Windoze and liked it, it gave me hours of
> pleasure. And I used GNU/Linux first on double boot system. Then
> sooner or later I have realized that it has no sense, and I would need
> to fully switch to GNU/Linux, and that would mean, I would need to
> forget about some games, I would need to forget about some heavily
> used programs.
>
> So then I have sit down, opened the book about Red Hat in Germany
> language, it was published by some DATA company maybe Data Becker, I
> do not remember, and I looked into it which programs could replace my
> routine and my programs I used so heavily. It was not an easy choice
> and I can remember me actually sweating before the decision to
> completely remove Windoze.
>
> That was 1999.
I came to it slightly differently; was studying and our Uni had Sun's
Ray server with Solaris on it. I soon discovered that it was much
smoother experience to sitt at home, do the assignmenets on my Pentium
II with Redhat on, and just sftp them to the Uni server and compile
everythigg via ssh. Gave me longer mornigns at home, and less wait for
Emacs to redraw then on Uni's computer if there were more then 5 people
logged in.

> I think KDE was not really free at the time.
I used it around 2000, it was free.

> I have also found that almost all the software on Red Hat CD or Suse
> CD was free software, only few pieces inserted by those companies were
> non-free and for that reason all the CD was spoiled, it could not be
> just duplicated and given away, that was a trap they tried to
> impose. I could distribute software from CD by duplicating it, but I
> would need to remove some pieces, which seemd hard at the time.
>
> So I just neglected it, and made copies any way, and gave to friends.
>
>> Short version: if trust worked we wouldn't need laws, and lawyers. There
>> wouldn't be hurt feelings and wars. If you wish we can discuss more
>> about trust, but I am not sure we need to.
>
> There is no absolute principle in general. 
That would be a general principle, which express a contradiction to
itself altso it's false -> there are absolute rules. Just joking; yes I
understand what you mean, I also think that every case should be delt
with on case basis; and that every individual should be judged
individually not after the group or such. However there are some
principles and guides whe can follow to make our lives easier, we can't
go philosophize about everything all the time. We can agree that 
killing each other on the streets is not good, for example. Isn't it an
absolute principle we can follow?

>> Yet another important issue is that trust based on previous experience,
>> as you described in your first response, does not leave space for people
>> to make misstakes.
>
> I have staff members, and I track their execution of projects by using
> Org files. I can know if staff member is reporting daily for last 12
> months, and if report is lacking today, I know there is something
> wrong, and it would not matter nothing if reports are lacking for some
> days, I would not say anything, I would know it is genuine obstacle.
>
> If staff member starts making reports but cannot really keep up with
> the simple routine, then I know this one is not putting attention.
>
> Thus I am building my experience on facts and have to make conclusions
> in future based on past experience of facts.
Sure, but in this case you are building your experience on facts. That
is ok; Some people build trust on simply belonging to a certain group, a
clan, race, colour or some other traits that have nothing with science
or individual performance to do. It can be good in some case, but it can
also be dangerous.

>> Companies are just entities, dead things that made decisions. Decisions
>> are made of people, it is people that make misstakes. People fail for
>> various reasons. Amongs any population there will be certain amount of
>> geniouses, certain amount of people with some condition etc. It is
>> normal, people should be allowed to fail to. And they should be also
>> allowed to correct their misstakes and continues to become a part of
>> society.
>
> That is right.
>
> For this reason we do not fire people for mistakes. We fire people for
> crimes. Maybe it is crime to repeat same mistake so many times over
> and over again when person fully understood instructions and when it
> is clear what is disallowed to do.
Hmm, you would better have very good proof that person *really*
understand instructions, and not just believing he/she understands. To
put it in other words; crime is maybe too heavy word to use in that
case. But sure, if someone is deliberately not doing the work as
required, or not capable to do the work, of course they can not be
trusted to continue that work. But I wouldn't mix word like crime in
that; crime is action commited against the law; it is probably not
against the law to sleep at the work; but it may not be desired. But I
am not a philosopher, so please don't take me too seriously.

>> That makes for a batter society. It is also not a guarantee they
>> will not make a misstake in the future. Saying that company X has
>> history of this and company Y has history of that, means that people
>> can not change and are not allowed to correct themselves. Companies
>> do hire other people, people come and go etc.
>
> I agree on that, and even more than you think based on these
> writings. 
That is great; I think people should search more for what the have in
common, rather then what divides them.

>> Anyway, if blob had source, and there was enough reason to look at it,
>> there would probably be someone to do it.
>
> I just ask myself is it totally hard to get internals of those chips
> and reverse engineer that software and make free software.
That would probbly be illegal, infringing on copyrights. So definitely
no. But there is always freedom of choice. As RMS does: if one don't
like the product one should not buy it. It is a pillar of free market!
People should exercise it more. Problem is just when there is no choice,
as it seems now (AMD also has something similar I have red).

>> Company Y might be really honest about their intention, both companies
>> can be honest, why wouldn't they after all? I am of firm believe that
>> most people are actually good people. However, if company X believes
>> they need to protect their trade secret they have no choice but to give
>> an opaque blob.
>
> There is free culture movement now that is derivative from free
> software philosophy and I am in agreement with it. For example, our
> company have hired an engineer to write a technical drawing for a
> machine, and that machine drawing have been made under the GNU FDL. We
> can sell the drawing, but we do not want to make obstacle that people
> cannot replicate the same machine themselves.
>
> Many companies would benefit positively if they would not protect
> those chips.
Yes. I sincerely think we live in decade of open source software. I am
not sure if we live in decade of Free software though. Unfortunately;
but I am not a market researcher.

>> So blob does not really solve the problem; it isn't sustainable; it is
>> not a general solution, at least not good enough. Neither is holding
>> back to year 2006, since one day that strategy will wear out. The world
>> will be left without old CPUs. We need more sustainable solution. That
>> is why I asked if those things work without network. I am not so
>> knowledgable about ME extensions or security in general, but maybe there
>> are people who are.
>
> There are solutions, there are today more free hardware computers then
> before. It is coming due to increased awareness, and that social
> movement is also derivative from GNU free software philosophy and
> writings of RMS, FSF hardware endorsements and similar public actions.
Sure; there have always been completely Free distros. Even Redhat back
at day when I started with it was Free by default, it was up to user to
install proprietary drivers. And the situation has become better. On
software front. Partly due to consumer behaviour, but also partly due
because companies have discovered that open sourced software si good for
business. I m not sure though that we speak of same things here. Most of
those free distros will need to run on those Intel's or AMD's CPUs, and
the blobs we are talking about are autonomous in those CPUs.

I have heard something that Netflix have started some show about users
being the product ... maybe awareness will become even better. I do
not own Netflix prenumeration nor do I have a TV so I have no idea.

> See: https://www.fsf.org/resources/hw

> and
>
> https://ryf.fsf.org/
>
> And there are those Talos computers, there is Purism notebook, but I
> think they did not finish fully the liberation, and there are some
> computers that are crowd funded.
Indeed, I agree with you. I believe definitely Purism have honest
intentions and that they are doing what they can, and I don't think
Intel is spying on you despite the ME; but it is a principle. Given a
tool there is always someone who will eventually use it. That makes me
very scary of nuclear weapons.

Best regards, and thank you for the kind response

Re: Hardware respecting your freedom

[Jean Louis]

* Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com> [2020-10-22 05:53]:
> I came to it slightly differently; was studying and our Uni had Sun's
> Ray server with Solaris on it. I soon discovered that it was much
> smoother experience to sitt at home, do the assignmenets on my Pentium
> II with Redhat on, and just sftp them to the Uni server and compile
> everythigg via ssh. Gave me longer mornigns at home, and less wait for
> Emacs to redraw then on Uni's computer if there were more then 5 people
> logged in.

Somewhere 1994, 95, I have used shell account, and tried out all
commands, if Emacs was there probably I used it blocking myself
thereafter and logging off and logging in, same for vi editor and many
others, it was much by trial and error.

> > I think KDE was not really free at the time.
> I used it around 2000, it was free.

KDE was free, Qt was not, at least those I had on CD.

> That would be a general principle, which express a contradiction to
> itself altso it's false -> there are absolute rules.

Those are beyond apprehension like the question of the end of the
universe.

> > For this reason we do not fire people for mistakes. We fire people for
> > crimes. Maybe it is crime to repeat same mistake so many times over
> > and over again when person fully understood instructions and when it
> > is clear what is disallowed to do.
> Hmm, you would better have very good proof that person *really*
> understand instructions, and not just believing he/she understands.

When person confirms, multiple times confirms to have it understood,
that is where I cannot go beyond it. When person repeats in own words
the set of instructions and thereby confirms person understood it,
that is where I cannot go more deeper. Then it happens again. It is in
countries that lack good education and thus general literacy like
Tanzania or Uganda.

And I manage their confirmations and understandings by using Org mode.

> To put it in other words; crime is maybe too heavy word to use in
> that case. But sure, if someone is deliberately not doing the work
> as required, or not capable to do the work, of course they can not
> be trusted to continue that work. But I wouldn't mix word like crime
> in that; crime is action commited against the law; it is probably
> not against the law to sleep at the work; but it may not be
> desired. But I am not a philosopher, so please don't take me too
> seriously.

When person does not follow instructions, company resources get
damaged, stolen, abused, misued, and so on. Crime, according to
Wordnet, can be an evil act not necessarily punishable by law. 

> > I agree on that, and even more than you think based on these
> > writings. 
> That is great; I think people should search more for what the have in
> common, rather then what divides them.

There is some misconception at some friends that when we speak about
free software and endorse some server or company, and maybe do not
endorse some other, that this may not be friendly or that it is not
welcoming.

I find the concept of teaching free software enlightening and
beneficial, I do to others what I would like somebody does to me, to
tell me about the problems (proprietary, subjgation, control over my
computing) and how to solve the problems (free software, liberation
from proprietary, control over computing).

17 years I have used GNU/Linux and some other OSes on extra computers
like OpenBSD, and also GNU/Hurd (somewhere back 2004-2006) without
knowing that those use proprietary blobs. Somewhere 2016 I have
discovered it through promotion of fully free software distributions,
and I felt betrayed for all that time. I had to be informed.

That information is helpful for awareness of a person. And I do not
find it neither dividing, or unwelcoming, quite contrary people
explained to me how to build some free firmware, which WiFi chips to
replace and similar.

In general free software set of principles, warnings, notices,
practical philosophy, this all has to be promoted better, duplicated
better on various lines.

OS distributions are one good line, many people do use GNU/Linux but
do they really get enlightened on what is it that they use? I do not
think so.

Thus teaching free software set of principles, practical guides
related to free software, computing control, subjugation, Javascript,
has immense social impact on many and it also steers corporations to
think about that.

LibreJS is one such example, it made such a good impact on awareness,
including, in my opinion, little less impact on Javascript liberation.

New generations are not even aware that they can turn on Javascript
and I remember well that this option was prominent in every browser
back then, today is not.

Gnome's browser epiphany, in my version on Hyperbola GNU/Linux-libre,
does not have any option to turn the Javascript off. Maybe in newest
options it does, but in my version it does not.

> > And there are those Talos computers, there is Purism notebook, but I
> > think they did not finish fully the liberation, and there are some
> > computers that are crowd funded.
> Indeed, I agree with you. I believe definitely Purism have honest
> intentions and that they are doing what they can, and I don't think
> Intel is spying on you despite the ME; but it is a principle. Given a
> tool there is always someone who will eventually use it. That makes me
> very scary of nuclear weapons.

Intel need not, others may do:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Management_Engine

It is totally unsafe if connected to Internet. Maybe is good to use
free hardware routers with good firewalls and protection.

-- 
Jean Louis

Re: Hardware respecting your freedom

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > > I think KDE was not really free at the time.
  > I used it around 2000, it was free.

The issue with KDE, as of 1998, was that Qt was nonfree.

At some point Qt was made free.  I don't know whether that had
happened by 2000.  Maybe a few years after.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: Hardware respecting your freedom

[Arthur Miller]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>   > > I think KDE was not really free at the time.
>   > I used it around 2000, it was free.
>
> The issue with KDE, as of 1998, was that Qt was nonfree.
>
> At some point Qt was made free.  I don't know whether that had
> happened by 2000.  Maybe a few years after.
Something like that. Qt was dual licensed (still is) and there was fear
that GPL license for Qt will go away. Someone (KDE folks I think)
started work on Free version of Qt, and it ended up on agreement between
KDE and Trolltech at the time that Qt shell be remain avialable under
GPL license.

Gnome was a reaction to KDE to build a desktop on a completely Free
toolkit, and was answer to KDE guys choosing Qt as a base for the
desktop.

I am not sure if I am correct about, something amongst those lines.

Re: Hardware respecting your freedom

[Pankaj Jangid]

Arthur Miller <arthur.miller@live.com> writes:

> Gnome was a reaction to KDE to build a desktop on a completely Free
> toolkit, and was answer to KDE guys choosing Qt as a base for the
> desktop.

That is true. Harmoney and GNOME projects were launched to counter the
non-free KDE. Harmoney's aim was to provide Qt compatible APIs. And this
forced KDE to release Qt under LGPL.

Re: Hardware respecting your freedom

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > Something like that. Qt was dual licensed (still is)

Not in 1998!  Qt was nonfree, pure and simple.
So I posted asking people to develop a free replacement.

  > Gnome was a reaction to KDE to build a desktop on a completely Free
  > toolkit, and was answer to KDE guys choosing Qt as a base for the
  > desktop.

I also posted asking people to develop another free desktop.
GNOME was the response.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)

Re: Hardware respecting your freedom

[Jean Louis]

* Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> [2020-10-24 06:50]:
> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
> 
>   > Something like that. Qt was dual licensed (still is)
> 
> Not in 1998!  Qt was nonfree, pure and simple.
> So I posted asking people to develop a free replacement.

Thank you for that.

I remember it was not free by inspecting the CD packages and reading
reviews about Qt not being free as I wanted to distribute and could
not.

From:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qt_(software)
Becoming free software–friendly[edit]

With the release of version 2.0 of the toolkit, the license was
changed to the Q Public License (QPL), a free software license, but
one regarded by the Free Software Foundation as incompatible with the
GPL. Compromises were sought between KDE and Trolltech whereby Qt
would not be able to fall under a more restrictive license than the
QPL, even if Trolltech was bought out or went bankrupt. This led to
the creation of the KDE Free Qt foundation,[124] which guarantees that
Qt would fall under a BSD-style license should no free/open source
version of Qt be released during 12 months.[125][126]

In 2000, Qt/X11 2.2 was released under the GPL v2,[127] ending all
controversy regarding GPL compatibility.

At the end of 2001, Trolltech released Qt 3.0, which added support for
Mac OS X (now known as macOS). The Mac OS X support was available only
in the proprietary license until June 2003, when Trolltech released Qt
3.2 with Mac OS X support available under the GPL.

In 2002, members of the KDE on Cygwin project began porting the GPL
licensed Qt/X11 code base to Windows.[128] This was in response to
Trolltech's refusal to license Qt/Windows under the GPL on the grounds
that Windows was not a free/open source software platform.[129][130]
The project achieved reasonable success although it never reached
production quality.

>   > Gnome was a reaction to KDE to build a desktop on a completely Free
>   > toolkit, and was answer to KDE guys choosing Qt as a base for the
>   > desktop.
> 
> I also posted asking people to develop another free desktop.
> GNOME was the response.

Thank you. Few words and world changed.


Jean

Re: Hardware respecting your freedom

[Arthur Miller]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>   > Something like that. Qt was dual licensed (still is)
>
> Not in 1998!  Qt was nonfree, pure and simple.
> So I posted asking people to develop a free replacement.
>
>   > Gnome was a reaction to KDE to build a desktop on a completely Free
>   > toolkit, and was answer to KDE guys choosing Qt as a base for the
>   > desktop.
>
> I also posted asking people to develop another free desktop.
> GNOME was the response.
That eventually also led to Motif becoming "Open" too, probably in
combination with LessTif being good enough implementation of Motif;
albeit it was too late for Motif to be relevant.

If you don't mind me asking; I am just curious, was LessTif not an
alternative because of LGPL license, or some other reason?

Re: Hardware respecting your freedom

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > If you don't mind me asking; I am just curious, was LessTif not an
  > alternative because of LGPL license, or some other reason?

LeesTif was a fine replacement for Motif.
However, to untrap KDE, we needed a replacement for Qt.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)