Open Laptop Soon to be Open for Business
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https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=20/01/21/1820210
What do you think?
The website is inaccessible from China, so I could only read it when I take a tour outside China.
Are you able to watch
archive.org?
The "no less free" is not the case. It requires a proprietary software blob and has been discussed here before.
https://mntre.com/media/reform_md/2020-01-18-finishing-reform.html#ports
says it is optional:
"HDMI port (on i.MX8M, requires an optional HDMI TX firmware blob to work)"
Or do you mean something else?
> "HDMI port (on i.MX8M, requires an optional HDMI TX firmware blob to work)"
>
> Or do you mean something else?
I think jxself is referring to the firmware blob needed to boot, announced here.[1]
"Unfortunately, during the boot process, i.MX8M requires a closed-source firmware for an embedded ARCompact) processor in the Synopsys DDR4 PHY). This firmware, which is only a few kilobytes in size, is responsible for regulating the physical connection to the DDR chips in the face of changing temperatures. We are in contact with reverse engineers with the goal of analyzing what the capabilities of this so called PHY Utility Block (PUB) are, and to find out if we have a chance to replace this firmware at some point in the future."
I stopped following the project at that point, so maybe the situation has changed.
[1] https://www.crowdsupply.com/mnt/reform/updates/re-introducing-reform
If there were a success to reverse engineer the proprietary program I would have expected some sort of announcement of that. I do not find any. Thus I assume that the situation is unchanged and wonder why they left that particular program out of the blog post, especially after they stated in the other thread that it was a "major concern" for them and so they put it "front and center." Now the mandatory blob no longer deserves to be "front and center" and instead fades into the background with only the optional one being mentioned?
> If there were a success to reverse engineer the proprietary program I
> would have expected some sort of announcement of that. I do not find
> any. Thus I assume that the situation is unchanged and wonder why they
> left that particular program out of the blog post, especially after
> they stated in the other thread that it was a "major concern" for them
> and so they put it "front and center."
Agreed. If they really have found a way to do without the blob, it is
weird that they have not explained how this is possible when in their
earlier post they seemed to say it would require reverse engineering.
Perhaps that particular blob is not of big concern if it is known to be only for temperature control. Perhaps they are still working on reverse engineering it, considering the overall goal.
> Perhaps that particular blob is not of big concern if it is known to be only for temperature control.
Perhaps. They said it was required to boot, not required for temperature control, and if it was not a big concern then I'm not sure why they described it as a "major" one, but when I said "perhaps the situation has changed" I was considering the possibility that after learning more about the blob they determined that it was not as important as they originally thought.
Probably, I wonder if it is a major problem on a remote level or if its just an offline risk. :/
aka, its easier to decrypt if you have the computer physically near you.
Or if it causes a network risk like intel me. Either way I realize it ain't great. I am hoping they can remove it in he future. :)
I would actually like to know about this as well.
Maybe ask them about it? I dunno.
Well, I plan to follow it till I find out anything.
If I see they make a change regarding this, i will say something.
Here is a recent interview with Lukas from the MNT Reform project:
https://librelounge.org/episodes/39-mnt-reform-with-lukas-hartmann.html
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