Is it software in RAM modules and SSD storage?
Okay so I bought a lot of stationary PC stuff to build a stationary custom watercooled pc.
Buuuut, some time after I had ordered all the parts I met FSF and the FLOSS community.
Now I have put up the Vega GPU for sale, the Ryzen CPU for sale and the ASRock AB350M motherboard for sale.
But what about the ram modules and SSD storage I bought? Are those just "pure hardware" containing no code at all which I can save for a brighter day?
Or how does all this work?
There is software running inside both HDD and SSD. An example:
http://spritesmods.com/?art=hddhack
But if you get rid of the HDD/SSD what will you use for storage? And so, we're stuck between a rock and a hard place.
There is no free hardware and it never will in the sense of the FSF. Storage contains software as well. The eoma68 in my opinion is a good idea to extend the life of the hardware. I don't think it will achieve a completely free hardware soon.
If we understand that free software is more like a philosophical view of life rather than a scientific approach we would also accept that this view can be modified and changed.
@GrevenGull why selling your cpu would have given you more freedom is quite obscure to me. But since free software is a philosophy I accept it since for you this defines free software :)
The FSF says:
Thus, the concept we really need is that of a *free hardware design*. That's simple: it means a design that permits users to use the design (i.e., fabricate hardware from it) and to copy and redistribute it, with or without changes. The design must provide the same four freedoms that define free software.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-hardware-designs.html
I see no reason why there would never be "free hardware" in that sense (i.e., free-designed hardware).
Hmm maybe because the technology to fabricate hardware is not on the grasp of few people and the technical skills are extremely high. Who can assure you that the factory that build your free design will not place any unwanted hidden backdoor (see ME)? :)
Nothing. Nowadays, we depend on mass-production for chips and hardware freedom is unreachable. That is why RMS argues that "in the meantime, there is no need to reject hardware with nonfree designs on principle". See the section "Must We Reject Nonfree Digital Hardware?" of https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-hardware-designs.html
Yep. I think that we should assume that first internet than the platform where we run our software are compromised. Do we have any way to mitigate these problems? For internet using end2end encryption in some protocols is already in use. What about the hardware? For what is known like the ME there are tools like the me_cleaner. But what about what we don't know? There is no way we can do something about. Never. It is not to be pessimistic but to be in the right mindset to think to alternative approaches to the free hardware. Can we write Os completely segregated from the hardware level? Can we obfuscate the content of the RAM so no real information is available to hardware backdoors? I think that we should start from this.