Re: [libreplanet-discuss] What did you enjoy about LibrePlanet 2019?

[address@hidden]

On 04/08/2019 04:58 PM, Quiliro Ordonez wrote:
> El 2019-04-08 18:34, Taiidan@gmx.com escribió:
>> Did the pur.idiots show up and peddle their fake "open source" firmware
>> computers again?
>
> I don't think it is necesary to insult them.

You're right, sometimes I get intensely bothered by them and their
dishonesty, apparent leverage over the FSF, insults of legitimate
companies etc. I wish I could say it was a "mistake by a new employee"
as they do but I can't as I am only one person.

They are not idiots - in fact they're far from it - they're expert level
madison avenue marketing, VC funded scam artists peddling not-libre
computers.

> Anyway, please explain why
> you think they are fake.

They sell "libre" laptops that have the hardware init entirely performed
via the Intel FSP binary blob, their website is dishonest and not up
front and even the name "Libre-M" is dishonest. They claim the ME is
disabled although the kernel and hw init code still runs.

They claim that they will "free" FSP and ME but that is functionally
impossible let alone in a timely fashion that would let them sell new
stuff, they also claim that they will backport that but as of now they
have 5 generations of hardware making such a thing inordinately
expensive even if they suddenly obtained legal source code.

Reverse engineering FSP, ME etc is something that would take tens of
millions, an expert team and 5 years of work per chipset.

Reverse engineering ME is illegal in the US under the DMCA as it is
bypassing a DRM mechanism and even if they could somehow accomplish this
(me cleaner not made by them!) they would be sued by intel and hollywood
as ME is used for PAVP, intel insider, HDCP etc.

In 5 years they'll still be saying they are "doing our best" while many
other companies are just doing.

Can you find the truth on their site? Yes they did in fact add it
eventually after many people complained but it is hidden in the fine
print and I haven't ever met anyone who wanted to buy one of their
products that knew the truth and they were all shocked when I told them.

They are Teflon, everything just goes off them like water off a raincoat.

>
>> Any booths for honest companies like raptorcs vikings, minifree etc? or
>> explanations about firmware and hardware freedom?
>
> Why do you think these are legitimate and the others are not?

They don't lie.

Vikings claims to sell owner controlled libre firmware systems flashed
with coreboot, they do.

RaptorCS claims to sell american made OpenPOWER CPU's and motherboards
with libre firmware, both of those claims are true.

Minifree claims to sell owner controlled libre firmware computers, they do.

Pur.company[1] claims to sell Libre laptops with a disabled me, they
don't - the hw init is entirely performed via binary blobs and the ME is
not disabled since the hw init code and the kernel still run. They also
imply they did more than just run ME cleaner which someone did the work on.
System-sevensix claims to sell american made computers with a disabled
ME, it is the same situation as above with the ME. The legal standard of
american made is "all or virtually all" components of a "made in usa"
product must also be from america but in this case the truth is obvious
as only the case is made in usa (maybe not even, probably china metal)
and even a layman knows computers are not a metal box.

[1](I don't want to up their search ranking)

This isn't a new thing, many people have talked about their dishonesty
before and nothing has changed on their end.

I do not understand why they continue to lie, they know it is wrong and
they also know people would buy honestly sold products.