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Miloslav Ciz 2024-06-11 13:36:28 +02:00
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free_hardware.md
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@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ Free (as in freedom) hardware is a form of ethical [hardware](hardware.md) align
[GNU](gnu.md), just like [us](lrs.md), highly advocates for free hardware, though, unlike with software, they don't completely reject using non-free hardware nowadays, not just for practical reasons (purely free hardware basically doesn't exist), but also because hardware is fundamentally different from software and it is possible to use *some* non-free hardware (usually the older one) relatively safely, without sacrificing freedom. The [FSF](fsf.md) issues so called **[Respects Your Freedom](ryf.md)** (RYF) certification for non-malicious hardware products, both free and non-free, that can be used with 100% free software (even though RYF has also been a target of some criticism of free software activists).
We, [LRS](lrs.md), advocate for more strict criteria than just a free-licensed hardware design, for example we prefer complete [public domain](public_domain.md) and advocate high [simplicity](kiss.md) which is a prerequisite of true freedom -- see [less retarded hardware](less_retarded_hardware.md) for more.
We, [LRS](lrs.md), advocate for more strict criteria than just a free-licensed hardware design, for example we prefer complete [public domain](public_domain.md) and advocate high [simplicity](kiss.md) which is a prerequisite of true freedom -- see [less retarded hardware](less_retarded_hardware.md) for more. We also stress that [freedom distance](freedom_distance.md) has to be minimized.
The topic of free hardware is a bit messy, free hardware definition is not as straightforward as that of free software because hardware, a physical thing, has some inherently different properties than software and it is also not as easy to design and create so it evolves more slowly than software and it is much more difficult to create hardware completely from the ground up. Now consider the very question "what even is hardware"? There is a grey area between hardware and software, sometimes we see [firmware](firmware.md) as hardware, sometimes as software, sometimes pure software can be hardwired into a circuit so it basically behaves like hardware etc. Hardware design also has different levels, a higher level design may be free-licensed but its physical implementation may require existing lower level components that are non-free -- does such hardware count as free or not? How much down does free go -- do peripherals have to be free? Do the chips have to be free? Do the transistors themselves have to be free? We have to keep these things in mind. While in the software world it is usually quite easy to label a piece of software as free or not (at least legally), with hardware we rather tend to speak of different levels of freedom, at least for now.