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Re: Meltdown / Spectre
From: |
Tobias Geerinckx-Rice |
Subject: |
Re: Meltdown / Spectre |
Date: |
Tue, 9 Jan 2018 22:18:51 +0100 |
User-agent: |
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/52.5.0 |
Katherine,
Not really an answer to your question, I'm afraid. Just some thoughts I
had after hitting ‘Send’ on my previous non-answer.
Katherine Cox-Buday wrote on 09/01/18 at 21:13:
> Tobias Geerinckx-Rice <address@hidden> writes:
>> [...] how do we square not recommending proprietary globs like this
>> in official channels with giving users all knowledge required to
>> decide for themselves?
>
> Yes, this exactly.
>
> It's a unique (hm, is it?) situation pitting the ideals of copyleft
I don't think it's unique per se, but it is of another degree entirely
than, for example, asking users to buy a €15 RYF-certified wireless card
instead of pushing proprietary firmware to the one they already have.[0]
The rationale there being that freedom is worth the price, and
(implicitly but importantly) that this price is affordable for anyone
who values their freedom and owns a computer to begin with.
I think that's reasonable.
> against the welfare of users. If an opaque microcode is required to
> successfully mitigate these bugs, what is the moral stance to take> I
> don't have an answer and that's why I'm asking here :)
Logically, it's perfectly sound to extrapolate the above policy to CPUs
and entire systems. I'm half surprised someone hasn't done so yet: buy a
Free(er) system, and you're arguably much better off than with even a
patched non-Free one. And you're voting with your wallet. We all win!
Morally, at least in the short-to-medium term, I'm not convinced.
The smell of privilege becomes hard to ignore with the costs and other
assumptions involved.
Like you, I'm very curious to know what others think.
* * *
Note: despite my musing above, I don't *actually* expect GNU Guix to
start shipping or even recommending proprietary software, including
microcode. It opens cans of worms and then the worms get everywhere.
Kind regards,
T G-R
[0]: I'll not address the question of whether a device with proprietary
firmware that you can or must update is more or less free than a device
with proprietary firmware that you can't.
- Re: Meltdown / Spectre, (continued)
- Re: Meltdown / Spectre, Chris Marusich, 2018/01/06
- Re: Meltdown / Spectre, Katherine Cox-Buday, 2018/01/08
- Re: Meltdown / Spectre, Marius Bakke, 2018/01/08
- Re: Meltdown / Spectre, Tobias Geerinckx-Rice, 2018/01/08
- Re: Meltdown / Spectre, Tobias Geerinckx-Rice, 2018/01/08
- Re: Meltdown / Spectre, Katherine Cox-Buday, 2018/01/09
- Re: Meltdown / Spectre,
Tobias Geerinckx-Rice <=
- Re: Meltdown / Spectre, Leo Famulari, 2018/01/10
- Re: Meltdown / Spectre, Katherine Cox-Buday, 2018/01/11
- Re: Meltdown / Spectre, Adonay Felipe Nogueira, 2018/01/11
- Re: Meltdown / Spectre, Tobias Platen, 2018/01/10
- Re: Meltdown / Spectre, Leo Famulari, 2018/01/10
- Re: Meltdown / Spectre, Christopher Lemmer Webber, 2018/01/10
- Re: Meltdown / Spectre, Kei Kebreau, 2018/01/10
- Re: Meltdown / Spectre, Chris Marusich, 2018/01/15
- Re: Meltdown / Spectre, Gábor Boskovits, 2018/01/17
- Re: Meltdown / Spectre, Alex Vong, 2018/01/14