"Tor, the Marqueteur" marqueteur@fineartmarquetry.com writes:
As for how to get more free HW, I think efforts like Talos, EOMA, and even Purism and ThinkPenguin are the best way forward. I wish the FSF would do a bit more to promote upcoming hardware that can at least be expected to be a step beyond what is currently available. It is Talos in particular I'm thinking of here. When I wrote them after the close of the Talos campaign on Crowd Supply, they indicated that the FSF hadn't seemed very interested in working with them, and more interested in a legislative approach. I think this is a shame, because that kind of approach, if successful, is only going to get a lot of people mad at them. Figure out how to promote open hardware so
Is that really fair? Being mad at FSF for not engaging enough in hardware project details, they were all about software until recently. While I agree fully that those projects are one good and important [1] way to go, I doubt that they will be the final warranty for ethical hardware for all users. How would that come to be? Sooner or later you mean, there will one or more projects shipping such spiffy, shiny, low cost and fully ethichal devices so they will, by the law of supply and demand, take over the world. Let's hope your are right.
For me, even the effort of giving out this RFY certificate is utterly impressing. I cannot even imagine the work it must take to do that, it is far beyond the engineering I am used to. It is a kind of auditing that would occupy large staff if I would estimate, all highly skilled in computer electronics and all things around it. But if there was proper legislation about this ethics, there will be a need for such auditing. See? FSF is already putting an example to it.
[1] for technical development and proof of concepts