Re: [libreplanet-discuss] What is ThinkPenguin?

[Dmitry Alexandrov]

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[ pardon if this message turns out a duplicate.                  ]

On 26/05/16 13:41, Greg Wright wrote:
> Are "Penguin" branded products Free-Hardware, Free-Firmware, neither?

It’s not very easy to define ‘free harware’ (how *deep* it should be
free?), however with regard to any product that is sold at
https://www.thinkpenguin.com/ the answer should be strait — no, it is
not free hardware.  (Something could escape my sight, of course.)

As for free firmware — products that pass ‘Respect you freedom’
certification and thus listed at [0]: two wi-fi adapters and a router at
the moment; should work without any non-free firmware and drivers.  I’m
afraid I could not say anything else for sure, you’d better ask them
directly.  I might guess, however, that their desktop and laptop
computers runs non-free BIOS at least.

[0] https://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/respects-your-freedom

> If they are free how/where do I get the GPL'ed content?

As for USB wireless adapters — TPE-N150USB and TPE-N150USBL — they are
based on Atheros AR9271 chipset, so firmware and drivers are meant to be
included in your operating system distribution (GNU/Linux?) — for
example in Trisquel we have ‘open-ath9k-htc-firmware’ package [1].

The Wi-Fi Router (TPE-NWIFIROUTER) runs LibreCMC [2].

[1] 
http://packages.trisquel.info/en/toutatis-updates/open-ath9k-htc-firmware
[2] https://librecmc.org/