OpenMoko and gNewSense
OpenMoko is great, but it looks like some proprietary software will be included by default. This is a problem, and will stop the FSF endorsing the project, because:
When major institutions in our community develop non-free software, they tell the public that non-free software is ok. This weakens our community’s resolve to maintain our freedom, and that weakness hurts our chances of surmounting each of the various obstacles that we face: hardware with secret specs, non-free tools and libraries … software patents, the DMCA, and the proposed SSSCA. When they make it tough to obtain free software for a certain job, will we persevere, or will we give in? Those who are willing to take the easy way out and use non-free software will not help us prevail.
However, for me, if the proprietary components are non-essential and easily and cleanly removable, I’ll accept and wildly advocate OpenMoko because there simply isn’t any alternative, other than not having a mobile phone.
And I hope that as Moko starts delivering the industry-change it smells of, and starts to become a Free Software Movement success story like Wikipedia, the proprietary components can be replaced with Free ones in the next version, and then this won’t be a problem for the FSF.
Generally, I think the trend is that all proprietary components of all GNU/Linux systems are being replaced with free ones.
When I started using GNU+Linux in 1999-2003, I used many proprietary components, and didn’t appreciate what software freedom was or why it was important. I used an Apple powerbook 2003-2006, and eventually realised that although it was a UNIX system, it was missing something, and that I needed something not UNIX: “GNU’s Not UNIX.”
When I started using GNU+Linux again, in 2006, there were almost zero proprietary components I ndeed. Or so I thought. Actually, all distributions include a lot of proprietary software.
For a while, the FSF couldn’t recommend a GNU+Linux distribution because there wasn’t one that didn’t include or recommend non-free software.
Debian is often thought of as the ‘most free’ mainstream distribution, but this isn’t actually true, because it does both, and isn’t going to stop doing either any time soon.
Instead, Fedora has been on a mission to be 100% Open Source - so unlike Debian it doesn’t have any non-free package repositories or refer to 3rd party ones in any way. But its policy is to accept OSI approved licenses which are not FSF approved, so it lacks FSF endorsement for the moment. This is turning towards Free Software though, with a recent “Free Software Analysis” - and when this is complete, I really hope that the FSF can endorse Fedora, because it is a very popular distribution.
Compare this to say, Ubuntu, which tells a lot of noisy lies about how it is 100% Free, but is actually increasing the amount of proprietary software it includes year on year:
No part of it will ever be proprietary, and we encourage people to use it, improve it and pass it on.
A large proportion of people using Ubuntu — including 70%-80% of people with new computers — need a non-Free driver for reasonable performance from their graphics card, wireless card, or modem, because there is no Free driver available, they had little choice in the matter.
Ubuntu’s contrary nature resulted in gNewSense, endorsed and supported by the FSF, which is a Ubuntu derivitive that is a 100% Free Software operating system - and its important to know and remember that this is the whole point of Free Software :-)
gNewSense firstly mirrors the ‘free’ sections of the Ubuntu repositories, and secondly, packages a custom Linux kernel with all the non-free firmware taken out. I have spoken to many people who believe that the Linux kernel does not include anything non-free, and that only the GNU+Linux distributors put it in. This is not the case, at all, unfortunately.
Here’s a couple of quotes to introduce the FSF position on proprietary firmware:
Firmware is software, and non-free firmware is non-free software … Since these programs are binary-only, they are clearly not free software … Their inclusion in Linux itself is a violation of the GPL, but the Linux developers don’t seem inclined to enforce the GPL against that violation. At present, essentially all GNU/Linux distros include the non-free firmware, because it was too hard to remove. So we decided to overlook the issue for the time being.
The ethical issues of free software arise because users obtain programs and install them in computers; they don’t really apply to hidden embedded computers, or the BIOS burned in a ROM, or the microcode inside a processor chip, or the firmware that is wired into a processor in an I/O device. In aspects that relate to their design, those things are software; but as regards copying and modification, they may as well be hardware. The BIOS in ROM was, indeed, not a problem. Since that time, the situation has changed. Today the BIOS is no longer burned in ROM; it is stored in nonvolatile writable memory that users can rewrite. Today the BIOS sits square on the edge of the line. It comes prewritten in our computers, and normally we never install another. So far, that is just barely enough to excuse treating it as hardware. But once in a while the manufacturer suggests installing another BIOS, which is available only as an executable. This, clearly, is installing a non-free program—it is just as bad as installing Microsoft Windows, or Adobe Photoshop. As the unethical practice of installing another BIOS executable becomes common, the version delivered inside the computer starts to raise an ethical problem issue as well. The way to solve the problem is to run a free BIOS.
Now I don’t buy a ‘use non-free drivers now to get popularity and then leverage on vendors to get free drivers’ reasoning at all. ATI used to release Free Software drivers, and then they got more popular than Nvidia, and dropp the FS drivers. If a vendor makes a GNU+Linux driver at all, the system is popular enough, and more won’t help.
Instead, I try to buy hardware carefully, and having done so, gNewSense works as perfectly as Ubuntu does. Fedora’s policy is to include firmware and Debian’s policy is to tolerate it until Debian 4 is launched, then shift it all to the non-free section.
Hopefully, the gNewSense project will grow and inspire the other distributions to change.
But firmware is going to become more and more of a problem, especially as EFI style BIOSs encourage hardware vendors to make more complex firmware.
For embedded device free software users like FIC, this issue is even more extreme, because its much more feasible to be 100% Free Software on a device than on a desktop - things like 3D graphics and multimedia demands are far away (though I hope Gnash will be in OpenMoko by default! :-) but the firmware side of things is closer by.
So I hoped the OpenMoko team is thinking about the non-free firmware issue now, and taking a freedom-loving approach, so they won’t get caught with their pants down - like the dozy Linux kernel maintainers who accept binary firmware will. (I think including proprietary firmware might well break the terms of the GPL anyway, but its a shame that no other kernel developers will take Linus to task on this…)
It is unclear how the OpenMoko team actually feels about proprietary software at the moment, because although their slogan is “Free Your Phone,” their actions will speak louder than words.
The OpenMoko and gNewSense by David Crossland, except the quotations and unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
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