Hello,
In our continuous pursuit of a world where digital access and freedom are unalienable rights, the imperative to embark on a bold, collaborative journey towards creating a 100% free firmware/free software-based computer has never been more critical. This initiative, transcending beyond mere technological innovation, represents a fundamental pillar in spreading democratic values globally. It invites a concerted effort from nations like the United States, alongside international partners, to champion this cause as a testament to our collective commitment to democracy, accessibility, and economic sustainability.
Economic Sustainability and Accessibility
The proposition of developing and distributing a computer that runs entirely on free software is not only a technological breakthrough but a significant economic opportunity. By leveraging the principles of free software, we ensure that the resulting technology is accessible, modifiable, and distributable by anyone, thereby drastically reducing costs associated with proprietary licenses and hardware constraints. Such cost efficiency makes it economically impractical for any nation to reject this technology, promising a broader reach and deeper impact in bridging the digital divide.
A Democratic Imperative
The essence of democracy is rooted in the freedom of choice and the right to privacy. A globally funded initiative to create a 100% free software computer epitomizes these principles, ensuring that every global citizen can access technology that is inherently designed to be free from government or corporate surveillance and control. This endeavor aligns perfectly with the vision of spreading democracy, as it empowers individuals with the tools for communication, education, and participation in the global digital ecosystem, free from undue interference.
Addressing International Concerns
Critics may argue that such an initiative could inadvertently benefit countries with contrasting political agendas, such as China and Russia, by providing them with advanced technology that could be repurposed. However, this perspective overlooks the transformative power of free software in fostering individual empowerment and autonomy. By making this technology universally accessible, we support the global populace in asserting their rights and freedoms, even within restrictive regimes. The focus is not on the geopolitical chessboard but on uplifting every individual, regardless of their government’s stance on digital freedom.
The Role of the United States and International Community
As a nation that champions the values of freedom and democracy, the United States, alongside other democratic countries, has a pivotal role to play in this initiative. By investing in and supporting the development of a 100% free software computer, we not only advance technological innovation but also reinforce our commitment to spreading democratic ideals. This effort requires a multi-faceted approach, including financial investment, diplomatic engagement, and collaborative research and development, to bring this vision to fruition.
Call to Action
The path to creating a globally accessible, free software-based computer is fraught with challenges, yet it is imbued with the potential for unprecedented global transformation. It calls for an unwavering commitment from all stakeholders involved, from government entities to private sector innovators and civil society advocates. Together, we can dismantle the barriers that stand between millions of people and their right to freely access and engage with the digital world.
As we move forward, let us anchor our efforts in the understanding that technology should serve humanity’s highest ideals—freedom, equality, and democracy. I invite you to join this noble endeavor, to contribute your expertise, resources, and voice to a movement that promises not just a technological revolution, but a leap forward in making our world more open, equitable, and free.
I think the best bet to target if we want 100% blob-free and freedom computer would be open architecture SBCs. They only need to compute and all I/O could be basic devices with no firmware upgrades.
For typical PC and laptop, my opinion is that if you get an AMD system for example, it is enough. I mean, there are still drawbacks most in term of firmware but if there isn’t some revolution coming that could lock Linux’es down, there are betters things to focus on.
And that thing are portables and embedded. Smartphones, ARM netbooks… Because we have no fully working OS for them. PostmartketOS is doing great job, but no reasonable phone with full hardware support. And most people are going to have these and have to suffer from Google/Apple placing whatever those two companies want on them.
There is already plenty of free and open source technology to create a free and open source computer.
What isn’t free and open source is factories and resources and labor.
…except for when you produce in Xinjiang
By free I think he ment freedom, not free price.
I mean the above still applies. Open source hardware standards and system architectures don’t really matter when you’re still reliant on the same handful of companies in the industry to carry the weight of actually making the hardware.
Like One Laptop Per Child?
This was actually moderately successful until Google suddenly decided that they want to use these for an advertising platform. Then it died.
I don’t think the post was about giving anything for free.
It’s not really clear what the post is about - it goes big on sweeping statements and skimps on specifics, so I was asking for clarification.
This post is about seeing how far you can push a GPT-generated post until people start to see through the holes.
And the answer was not very far.
It’s a valiant idea, but it will never take hold. People won’t want to “pay money” for something that is free, even if it is to support something.
Is this different than a Linux distro?
This is all of the bits that aren’t the operating system.
For example…?
Hardware
Wow So you want to compete directly against the combined force of Intel, AMD, Micron,TSMC, all at once? How often do you hope to release a GPU or Processor?
It’s not about competing, it’s about providing an alternative. GNU/Linux isn’t really competing with windows as a desktop OS for the masses, but people who want more freedom and privacy get the alternative. Fairphone isn’t competing with Samsung or Apple either.
I feel like if we follow your line of thought, then we should never try to do things better because the existing is too big.
That’s just an a architectural description, any non toy implementation is still propriety. That’s without solving the layout and tapeout for whatever highly propriety process node you plan to build on.
This might suprise you, but looking at byte size almost half of the Linux (kernel, to be precise, the part that communicate with hardware) is not open source.
I fully support this. The Raspberry Pi Foundation’s corporatism was the last straw for me.
End to end free and open source. RISC-V chipset.
100% open sourcewould be impossible. You can probably use freecad and kicad to make the various pieces, but the moment you need to manufacture your open source design (like RISC-V) on silicon, there’s no way to avoid using proprietary cad software. There are like at most 3 softwares that can do that, all and are incredibly complicated and expensive
To have at least 100% software would be great.
Hardware internal design you won’t be able change by yourself anyway.
Ignoring the fact that the body of this post is very likely LLM-generated, this does seem pretty cool.
Yup, I got through like 4 sentences and thought, “no way this guy wrote this up just for this post”, saw how long it was and the tell-tale formatting and yeah chatgpt wrote this
Nothing says “commitment” and “serious project” like not having the time to write your own manifesto.
Removed by mod
I see people dumping perfectly good working laptops all the time. Some of them end up getting resold as used, some are kept at home by people thinking they’ll reuse them and many are just eventually thrown away because people don’t realize they can be repurposed.
I’m not the most technically minded person but I’ve taken the time to learn how to build a basic desktop PC and install a Linux distro on it. I’ve picked up several of my friends and relatives old laptops they were planning on either trying to sell or just throw away because they don’t want to be bothered learning how to install Ubuntu. The majority of people solve technical problems by just trashing things and buying something new. I see people junking laptops, tablets and smartphones all the time. The worst I’ve seen is parents teaching their kids this behaviour… I’ve watched the kids complain about their $1,000 Apple phone’s memory is full and ask their parents for a new one which they get … then the old phone is thrown in the drawer and forgotten about … not even backed up or data transferred … a year or two goes by and eventually it is sold for nothing or just thrown away.
There’s no need to manufacture new cheap devices … just resurrect old stuff, install Linux and you’ve got yourself a $50 laptop with the latest software that will work with the latest services and websites.
I literally just had a client ask where he should recycle all his old computers, thinking they were just garbage.
I ended up with a 6 year old Dell All-In-One that is now running Linux Mint and acting as a second TV (and it has a touch screen!), a four year old Asus Laptop with a dead battery (that he thought was totally dead because it wouldn’t turn on unless it’s plugged in) that is now running Linux Mint and acting as my video conferencing station, a 7 year old tower that I upgraded for him 3 years ago with 2 TB SSD that is now waiting for me to find a use for it, another old tower that I upgraded several years ago with 2 8TB drives so that he could archive vast amounts of mostly useless old businesses data he thought he might need… those are also waiting for me to think of a purpose for them… 3 nice big monitors (2 are VGA only, but I have some VGA to HDMI adapters)…
All for the price of taking a bunch of ACTUAL ewaste to the recycle center.
My company is going to scrap hundreds of laptops, some new models with less than a year of use, because it’s upgrade season and it’s “too risky to give away”.
I was begging then to let me keep mine, paying. I already have access to all my data and it’s 9 months old.
Nope, to the bin.
My mother’s work place did the same. Keeping it? Wiping it? Taking it out to the parking lots and shooting the drives? Nope. Straight to scrap, all of them. Same thing with almost all of the (public) schools I’ve been to. In fact my teacher, knowing I was in tech, dug some out of the scrap bin and I refurbished them for the class, as he was desperately short. To my surprise they were thinkpads with i7’s and 8gb of ram each in like 2017.
Utterly crazy how people are so willing to junk their computers for basically no reason .
Dude… I literally just got out of local school looking for funding for a computer lab.
Any suggestions for finding these laptops will be highly appreciated
How do they dispose of hardware? I feel like a covert night time rescue operation is in order.
They just said “send to scraping, can’t be reused”. The cost of those laptops is around the weekly cloud compute cost of a team member, we are taking a rounding error in the company finances, so they just won’t care.
Even though this is a great idea, it’s also incredibly unreasonable.
There will be people cheating the hell out of this, because let’s face it. What people need is not a free computer. They need food and money.
What ever that is possible to scrape from these machines, the market will open for it today if you launch your computer tomorrow.
It’s a nice thought, but it’s the wrong way going around this. If you really want to make a difference, you open up your business somewhere in an area you want to help and you create jobs.
Stable income is a sure way road to decrease in crinimal activity and a more safe society. THEN you can consider providing free stuff, when there’s no reason to abuse it.
Maybe I’m too pessimistic, and I’d love to be convinced otherwise.
Yes, you‘re too pessimistic imo but the core critique seems valid to me.
We need everyone to bombard everyone they know with one message:
„Billionaires (companies and individuals) need to be disowned and the money used to feed those who dont have food and shelter those who dont have shelter“.
We will still have trillions to spare but this is the highest priority right fucking now and we have a lot more power than we think, especially if we shut the fuck up infighting and instead start to prioritize.
Because rn, if you have shelter and food, you should be fighting to decapitate the 1% and shove that downward and let it trickle up.
Edit: before the obvious „but companies will move away!!!“ yes, they might, but to where? There is no country where people dont think this and the few psychopaths who would take advantage of this cant do shit against the quiet majority. Also, i hope they move away because if Starbucks (i.e.) is gone in a country, guess what, somebody else will take over and make money instead.
There will be people cheating the hell out of this, because let’s face it. What people need is not a free computer. They need food and money.
While I’m not personally at all against giving out free computers … that’s not really what is meant here.
I think we’re talking about free as in “speech”, not necessarily “beer”. In the case of hardware, this would mean that the design is “open” to be viewed, copied, or derived from. For example, if you develop a processor using the ARM architecture, you have to pay ARM royalties.
Stable income is a sure way road to decrease in crinimal activity and a more safe society. THEN you can consider providing free stuff, when there’s no reason to abuse it.
I mean as long as the capitalists are the ones footing the bill I got no problem scamming them out of free computers or whatever. They scammed you and everyone you know out of your environment, your freedom, your privacy, your future, so fuck’em. Whatever you take from them is in better hands in yours than theirs.
More generally, I don’t agree that we need to wait for stable incomes to do other things.
As a nation that champions the values of freedom and democracy, the United States
Ha ha ok I’m out 😂
Doesn’t sound like a fully international effort to me
Bro missed the last 70 years of American politics
Bro missed the last
70247 years of American politics
Two party system, where everyone can’t vote and if you can it won’t be worth the same as your friend or relative.
Spoofers.
And Freedom ©®™
*$99.99amonthYourhomemayberepossessedifyoudonotkeepuppaymentsseewebsitefordetailsyourstatutoryrightsareafuckingjoke
This is a violation of rule 5 but nothing will be done because all mods everywhere are assholes that selectively enforce the rules.
Everywhere.
I thought lemmy was an exception, but it turns out it isn’t.
Yeah! Let us withhold their paycheck to teach them a lesson!!
I agree and I am fully supportive of an open source computer from top to bottom. This shouldn’t be here.
This post is ironic, but the united states by showing their muscles and forbidding Huawei to use newer arm CPU designs or x86 chips without a specific export license, let the Chinese government to create a secret multibillion fund for RISC -V development
if I ever win the lottery I’m designing my own phone OS
We need to make Linux smartphones. Current players seem sketchy.
We have linux „capable“ smartphones such as fairphone, pinephone and such but its really slow and expensive development from what I read. Wanted to try but the price is still quite high for something that works just meh if at all. I would probably need to get my hands on a well configured pinephone to lose my bias.
PinePhone is bad at organising, they got many developers turned around from them. While Fairphone do not develop Linux for their phones, they just don’t disturb.
