From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Katherine Cox-Buday Subject: Re: Meltdown / Spectre Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2018 13:45:32 -0600 Message-ID: <87bmi0mb6r.fsf@gmail.com> References: <874lnzcedp.fsf@gmail.com> <20180106174358.GA28436@jasmine.lan> <87lghapeu5.fsf@gmail.com> <87incc6z9o.fsf@gmail.com> <87fu7g436e.fsf@fastmail.com> <807794bd-5262-8b36-1f9f-dd3a316928ff@tobias.gr> <87d12i7pud.fsf@gmail.com> <315934ac-8ea6-5728-87a3-26cc59033220@tobias.gr> <20180110052623.GA29749@jasmine.lan> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:51940) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1eZinF-0007Oo-44 for guix-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 11 Jan 2018 14:45:42 -0500 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1eZinA-0001fC-9s for guix-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 11 Jan 2018 14:45:41 -0500 Received: from mail-io0-x232.google.com ([2607:f8b0:4001:c06::232]:41215) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.0:RSA_AES_128_CBC_SHA1:16) (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1eZinA-0001eQ-4W for guix-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 11 Jan 2018 14:45:36 -0500 Received: by mail-io0-x232.google.com with SMTP id f6so3240934ioh.8 for ; Thu, 11 Jan 2018 11:45:35 -0800 (PST) In-Reply-To: <20180110052623.GA29749@jasmine.lan> (Leo Famulari's message of "Wed, 10 Jan 2018 00:26:23 -0500") List-Id: "Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: guix-devel-bounces+gcggd-guix-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sender: "Guix-devel" To: Leo Famulari Cc: development@libreboot.org, guix-devel@gnu.org Leo Famulari writes: >> Morally, at least in the short-to-medium term, I'm not convinced. >> The smell of privilege becomes hard to ignore with the costs and other >> assumptions involved. > > I think I agree with you here, Tobias. > > To me, the right choice is not to suggest that people replace almost > every general-purpose CPU that exists, but rather to help them fix these > bugs while keeping the CPU they've already paid for, and that the > Earth's ecology has already paid for. Even though microcode updates are > not free software. I really appreciate the viewpoints expressed here, thank you. It's a great reminder that software freedom doesn't exist in a vacuum, and that its intent is to do good. It's worth considering what that means in a more global context. > This is a situation where some definition of "user safety" beats "user > control", in my estimation. I've been reading up on the philosophical differences between BSD and GNU licenses, and one of the points that's often made is that BSD is the freer of the two -- allowing users to do as they please -- but GNU expresses the most freedom globally and is therefore more ethical. It is a fun thought experiment to extrapolate and apply the same logic to this situation: what would express the most freedom globally: faithfully applying the GPL, or assisting users with securing their computing environments. Please note that I'm advocating any approach; only having a nice discussion with like-minded folks. -- Katherine