From af405c8d333b4ff4e3f5b6b11b8fc4034f0cf87c Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Leah Rowe Date: Fri, 3 Mar 2023 04:39:51 +0000 Subject: [PATCH] clarify paragraph in the policy page This patch addresses the following issue: https://notabug.org/libreboot/lbwww/issues/27 --- site/news/policy.md | 11 +++++++++-- 1 file changed, 9 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/site/news/policy.md b/site/news/policy.md index 0d008d1..32df08a 100644 --- a/site/news/policy.md +++ b/site/news/policy.md @@ -184,11 +184,18 @@ more pragmatic way. You can read those guidelines by following this URL: * FSF Respects Your Freedom (RYF) guidelines: **https://ryf.fsf.org/about/criteria** -The FSF RYF guidelines state the following: +Put simply, the RYF guidelines pertain to commercial products, with the +stipulation that they must not contain proprietary software, or known privacy +issues like backdoors. + +The total exclusion of all proprietary software is currently not feasible. For +example, proprietary SDR firmware in WiFi chipsets, firmware in AHCI devices +like HDDs or SSDs, and the like. The FSF RYF guidelines state the following +exception, to mitigate this fact: * "However, there is one exception for secondary embedded processors. The exception applies to software delivered inside auxiliary and low-level processors and FPGAs, within which software installation is not intended after the user obtains the product. This can include, for instance, microcode inside a processor, firmware built into an I/O device, or the gate pattern of an FPGA. The software in such secondary processors does not count as product software." -This is a violation of every principle the FSF stands for, *and it should be +This exception violates every principle the FSF stands for, *and it should be rejected on ideological grounds*. The rest of libreboot's policy and overall ideology expressed, in this article, will be based largely on that rejection. The definition of *product software* is completely arbitrary; software is