SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
It doesn't look like the Talos Secure Workstation will see the light of day with it's crowdfunding campaign ending this week and it's coming up more than three million dollars short of its financing goal. [Editor note: It did not meet the funding goal.] Now there's another effort to offer a libre system but using off-the-shelf x86 hardware.
[...] Libreboot developer Leah Rowe is now launching a libre system out of the ashes of the Talos Secure Workstation. She wrote in an email to Phoronix, "It's a high-end desktop/server platform, available in either configuration. It also supports virtualization and PCI passthrough, unlike older systems, so Qubes would be compatible...TALOS looks set to fail. Crowd Supply has removed it from their homepage, and Raptor Engineering is writing up an announcement that TALOS is shutting down - they are going to link to Minifree and tell people to purchase Libreboot D16 from me."
But before getting too excited, this isn't a new platform but rather an existing AMD server motherboard that simply comes pre-loaded with Libreboot to free the firmware/BIOS and then loaded with Debian GNU/Linux. The desktop and server versions make use of an AMD Opteron 6272, a.k.a. the older 32nm "Interlagos" CPUs derived from Bulldozer and released back in 2011.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 4, Interesting) by butthurt on Wednesday January 18 2017, @05:08PM
(emphasis removed)
It is extremely unlikely that any post-2013 AMD hardware will ever be supported in libreboot, due to severe security and freedom issues; so severe, that the libreboot project recommends avoiding all modern AMD hardware.
-- https://libreboot.org/faq/#amd [libreboot.org]
They go on to describe what they consider multiple misfeatures in recent AMD processors.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday January 18 2017, @05:45PM
When the Pentium III came out, there was a ruckus because Intel had added unique processor IDs to the CPU. It was an invasion of privacy, etc. A little later, a significant change from Microsoft Window 2000 to Windows XP was the addition of the activation key, which provoked another ruckus. I stuck with a Pentium II machine for years, with the Windows part of the dual boot being to Windows 2000, not XP. Did that matter? As things turned out, it didn't.
Manufacturers can stuff all the privacy and freedom destroying capability they want into their CPUs. But let them actually use it to hurt lots of people, and they may find they made a mistake, just as Turbo Tax learned with their copy protection scheme that modified the boot sector, and Sony BMG learned with their root kitted audio CDs. I'd love to have LibreBoot, but I'm not going to live with obsolete tech to have it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18 2017, @05:53PM
that's complete BS, nor sony or any big corporation has learnt anything about privacy and spy issues,
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday January 18 2017, @06:16PM
that's incomplete BS, they HAVE learned that a better PR campaign is needed, carefully planned, BEFORE screwing the public.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Wednesday January 18 2017, @08:19PM
Overwatch (Blizzard Entertainment) is now banning cheating players permanently using some kind of hardware ID> maybe it is simply the CPUID, we don't know.
I am curious how they distinguish between genuine cheats, and people who bough used hardware: possibly sold at a discount when Overwatch stopped working for the seller.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday January 19 2017, @05:31AM
As I recall, since Windows Vista, Microsoft has the OS build a unique fingerprint from the hardware. They wanted to stop people from simply copying a hard drive with a verified installation of Windows to other machines. That of course breaks the perfectly legitimate operation of moving the hard drive to new hardware. Even replacing hardware that had failed was tricky. MS got some flack for making Windows too fussy on that point. Merely changing the video card might cause Windows to decide it was not verified, and MS had to back off somewhat.
I've used a proprietary Fortran 95 compiler that used the MAC address to lock itself to a single computer. Was annoying, but I figured it out and circumvented it pretty fast. With VMWare, was able to make virtual machines with identical MAC addresses. The machines couldn't be on the same LAN of course, but for our purposes that wasn't a problem.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @03:21PM
Don't support Leah Rowe!
If you need reasons why, they have already been posted to Soylent and Slashdot in the past.
She singlehandedly ruined the libreboot project, gave FSF/GNU a black eye and a finger, and has done quite a bit of publicized damage to the community as a result.
Supporting people like that is not going to help fund libreboot's successor nor help the community any further than the TALOS workstation would have.
What is needed now is a standardized cpu socket, a northbridge asic that can handle unpatented memory technology and interfaces to cpu and bus support chipsets. SoCs may make sense for reducing power consumption and lowering device cost in a proprietary ecosystem, but for supporting an open hardware environment, separating components out to reduce patent costs and allow interfacing to differing technologies is more important. Remember what we had, remember what we lost, and consider what the future needs most.
That is all, have a great day folks!
(Score: 3, Informative) by butthurt on Friday January 20 2017, @12:31AM
Don't support Leah Rowe!
If you need reasons why, they have already been posted to Soylent and Slashdot in the past.
She singlehandedly ruined the libreboot project, gave FSF/GNU a black eye and a finger, and has done quite a bit of publicized damage to the community as a result.
Supporting people like that is not going to help [...]
I wasn't aware of the controversy. I found a couple of Web pages in which Ms. Rowe tells her side of the story:
https://libreboot.org/gnu/ [libreboot.org]
https://libreboot.org/gnu-insult/ [libreboot.org]
She links to these pages, among others:
https://www.fsf.org/news/free-software-foundation-statement [fsf.org]
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/info-gnu/2017-01/msg00001.html [gnu.org]
As I understand from a cursory look at those, Ms. Rowe, who is transgendered, learned, was apparently in communication with a former employee of the Free Software Foundation, who claimed to have been bullied at work and sacked merely for being transgendered. In solidarity with that person, Ms. Rowe, who is the maintainer of libreboot, took action so that libreboot would no longer be affiliated with the GNU project. She also asked that donors to the FSF withdraw their funding. In response, the FSF called the former employee's claims as recounted by Ms. Rowe "unfounded" and said that they have policies against discrimination.
It's predictable that Ms. Rowe's actions, taken in protest, would have undesirable consequences. I hesitate to condemn her for them.
What is needed now is a standardized cpu socket, a northbridge asic that can handle unpatented memory technology and interfaces to cpu and bus support chipsets.
My knowledge of RAM is about 15 years out of date. I recall that Rambus' RDRAM was controversial because of the company's use of patents, while JEDEC was widely perceived as having a non-problematic attitude toward patents. Rambus was bought by Intel but its technology never became popular, as I understand it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RDRAM [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JEDEC [wikipedia.org]
Have you come to the conclusion that hardware patents are always a problem? I'm aware that Intel patented a bus used by the Pentium Pro and several subsequent processors, and (presumably because of unacceptable licencing terms) no other manufacturer made a compatible CPU. Before that, an assortment of manufacturers made CPUs that worked with Socket 7.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socket_7 [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socket_8 [wikipedia.org]
Since then, the PC platform has had Intel-compatible and AMD-compatible motherboards, and other manufacturers, if I'm not mistaken, have minuscule market share. That, I surmise, is at least part of what you mean by "what we had [...] what we lost."
In contrast, Intel invented and patented the PCI bus, but licenced it at reasonable prices; it became widely used. In my opinion, if patents are used the way they were with PCI, or the way JEDEC uses them, they aren't a problem; if they're used the way they were with RDRAM, or the way Intel did with Socket 8, they are a problem. Making hardware entails costs for materials, labour, factories, and distribution; adding licencing fees to those need not be a show-stopper and could mean that the resulting hardware is more performant than alternative non-patented hardware.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FRAND [wikipedia.org]
With other commenters here looking down their noses at 2011-vintage hardware, your idealistic attitude (in somewhat the same way as Ms. Rowe's) may not be the most strategic one.
(Score: 1) by butthurt on Friday January 20 2017, @07:23AM
I had meant to edit out the word "learned" from that post.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 23 2017, @01:08AM
With SLOT-1 I believe Intel screwed over their second source chipset suppliers, first by not providing documentation (or incorrect documentation) while producing their own chipsets, then by limited who they licensed their technology to. (VIA Tech had a licensing deal at some point and when Intel didn't negotiate they just violated the patents until Intel took them to court before coming to an out of court settlement. That is why Via C3 chips were Socket 370 compatible,except the BGA variants used in the EPIAs, but later chips were not socket compatible (C7s were P4 bus but due to the settlement they were required to use a pinout that didn't violate Intel's patents on Socket 478/479 and discontinued usage of the bus after a few years.)
So no, Intel is not 'FRAND' for anything other than the standard components they do not have a 'captive audience' for, and haven't been since Socket 7 died out.
And I am well aware how unlikely what I suggested is to happen. But my point was that WITHOUT that happening, our odds of retaining computers which are 'ours to control' is close to nil.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Monday January 23 2017, @02:36AM
> [...] Via C3 chips were Socket 370 compatible [...]
I'd forgotten that. Someone wrote in Wikipedia:
On the basis of the IDT Centaur acquisition, VIA appears to have come into possession of at least three patents, which cover key aspects of processor technology used by Intel. On the basis of the negotiating leverage these patents offered, in 2003 VIA arrived at an agreement with Intel that allowed for a ten-year patent cross license, enabling VIA to continue to design and manufacture x86 compatible CPUs. VIA was also granted a three-year period of grace in which it could continue to use Intel socket infrastructure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Via_C3#Legal_issues [wikipedia.org]
So no, Intel is not 'FRAND' for anything other than the standard components they do not have a 'captive audience' for, and haven't been since Socket 7 died out.
I didn't mean to imply otherwise. I was trying to say that the way they used patents in regard to PCI (which TBH I don't have detailed knowledge of) seemed innocuous to me, whilst the way they used it with Socket 8 and its successors stifled competition.
But my point was that WITHOUT that happening, our odds of retaining computers which are 'ours to control' is close to nil.
Your remarks, well informed as they are, haven't convinced me that FRAND licencing is a serious obstacle to open computing.