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: 2) by Desler on Wednesday January 18 2017, @04:37PM
it's coming up more than three million dollars short of its financing goal. [Editor note: It did not meet the funding goal.]
Was this editor note really needed? Is the editor from the Department of Redundancy Department?
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday January 18 2017, @04:40PM
Maybe there's some kind of technical distinction between "financing goal" and "funding goal"?
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Wednesday January 18 2017, @04:48PM
The article was written before the campaign failed. The editor's note confirmed the ultimate outcome of the campaign.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday January 18 2017, @04:54PM
It missed their only goal by a factor of six.
I've never used crowdsupply but my experience with kickstarter and games is its almost stereotypical to have a dozen goals and if they reach $5K total funding you get a new set of maps or characters and at $6K you get plastic characters and at $7K you get an additional module to the game etc.
So its possible that they could have had subgoals such that $1M they ship the very bare board like a featureless MB from the 80s $2M they add legacy PS/2 input $3M they add on board sound $4M they add on board ethernet $5M they add on board winmodem (just kidding, probably). They didn't, but it could happen in theory.
$3M seems too high to be a hobby project like the S100 people today where hundreds of dollars trade on handshakes, while also being too little to bootstrap a sustainable long term business in a very complicated marketplace.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Thursday January 19 2017, @04:48AM
It missed their only goal by a factor of six.
I'm surprised it was even that much. What's the point of this? Why did it get even $0.5M in funding? Who would gamble $7K on possibly getting an updated IBM POWERstation at some point in the future? I mean OK, openeverything, peace love and mung beans and all that, but spending $7K to get it?
(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.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18 2017, @05:28PM
It's clear from recent years that current computing giants are going to be producing inherently broken systems; the only viable solution is to take your ball and go to a different court.
It would be nice to see those who are interested in the libre philosophy put all of their effort into pushing a fundamentally libre computing system from the ground up—sure it will be shit at first, but what is the alternative? 6-year old (and ever aging) tech that is getting no improvement?
The future is RISC-V, or something like it. Please, put your brains behind that. Let's escape, a grovel no more.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday January 18 2017, @06:19PM
I wish I still had mod points.
RISC-V or something like it is the only way that the public will be able to protect itself at the hardware level.
If a state actor, including your own government, can compromise your system security at the hardware level, then we're all skroowed.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Thursday January 19 2017, @01:13AM
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20 2017, @06:09AM
As long as the tech can be developed by "the community", then that's fine. It's the ability to improve in a particular direction that is valuable; current tech is a totally captured.
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Wednesday January 18 2017, @06:05PM
I mean, the only time I have heard of the Power8 libre project is well, now... because they failed.
I like to think that while I don't hang on the net all day looking at tech news, I am decently well informed, and I have never heard of their attempt at a libre Power system.
I might have been wiling to chip in a bit on the funding otherwise, and who knows how many other people might have done the same if they had heard about it in the first place.
Sure enough I have heard of them now, but to be honest I am more interested in the power8 system, then a warmed up AMD box (I get their goal, but for the effort I can just buy an old AMD system without the modern security crap, and install Libreboot myself, for cheaper). A desktop RISC workstation? Now that would have been cool!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18 2017, @06:18PM
You heard about it, but you didn't care, and so your brain erased having heard about it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18 2017, @08:04PM
Well, I heard about it (even visited the website) and was interested in purchasing such system when it would be available (with all the inconveniences of having it shipped to Europe). I wasn't aware that it was a crowdfunding project. A "refurbished" AMD system... no thanks, I'll pass.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @04:02AM
Well, Soylent ran the original announcement:
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=16/03/17/208243 [soylentnews.org]
I also saw it mentioned a few times in comments. A quick search did not come up with the CrowdSupply campaign being on here, but a lot of sites do no like to run crowd funding campaigns. I have already seen 'soyvertisment' being used as a joke.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Wednesday January 18 2017, @07:07PM
If you are looking for a libre computing platform, an EOMA68 'mini desktop' might, possibly, be suitable. It is by no means a smoking-hot server, but from small beginnings...
https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop [crowdsupply.com]
Note: it has raised (at the time of writing) $198,165 of a $150,000 goal - i.e it is funded.
Read the Updates on the Crowdsupply website, (there are 43 of them), plus look at the Rhombus Tech website: http://rhombus-tech.net/ [rhombus-tech.net]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18 2017, @07:51PM
The problem is that it uses ARM, which is not the nice little open platform that people think it's supposed to be, especially when it comes to any integrated GPU.
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Wednesday January 18 2017, @08:39PM
They are going for the "Respects your Freedom" certification. To do that, they are disabling the GPU on the Free versions.
deep in message thread [gnu.org]
..or possibly not:
Lima Driver [limadriver.org]
Development looks stalled at the moment.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18 2017, @08:52PM
Sigh
(Score: 2) by rleigh on Wednesday January 18 2017, @09:45PM
I was very interested and initially signed up after heading about it. After fully costing it out, it was way out of my budget. They were selling the mainboard, which was pretty expensive, and you then had to buy a pretty expensive POWER CPU to put on it. Freedom has a price, and I would have very much liked to have been able to stump up the cash, but it was a good bit beyond what I could justify. Low volume runs of custom hardware will command a premium, so the high price is certainly understandable.
Where I think this failed was that it was a high-end board for a high-end CPU. If they had been able to design a cheaper and simpler board with lower end POWER CPUs that might have been more affordable for more people. On the board side that might have been possible, IBM don't really do low end POWER chips though.
I know IBM got out of commodity hardware, but it would benefit the POWER platform as a whole for there to be a reference board or something which is accessible to average joes; if it encouraged adoption of the platform in the workplace it would make it cost effective. I used to use PowerPC Macs for this--affordable powerpc hardware, what's not to like. But there's nothing in that ballpark today that I'm aware of.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @03:43AM
Someone managed to create an "Amiga", check http://amigaonthelake.com/amigaone-x5000-system-first-encounters-bundle/ [amigaonthelake.com]
The CPU is "old" (no idea when it was launched, maybe it wasn't so old then), but at least the price is not so high as this POWER8 project, USD 1840 for the base configuration, including box, video card, RAM, etc.
If they managed to get this, there must be a way to get more, maybe even newer.
(Score: 1) by Burz on Thursday January 19 2017, @06:57AM
Here we had some dufus spouting specs and a 'get right with the big, heavy, hot harware' mindset... And not even a tiny nod to PowerPC to bring this fever-dream down to earth.
So you want to build a 'secure' and trusted computer... that you have to schedule time at a guarded facility to use?! Haaaaa...! I'll stick with my TPM-guarded laptop runnig Qubes---even though it uses Intel---thank you very much. The dufus-in-question didn't even postulate a target audience or type of user for their product.
Of course its dead!
I think the future of open hardware PCs will involve some formulation of ARM, or maybe the successor to whatever RMS is running now. Open GPU designs are advancing, too. Eventually, some smart people with a bit of the holistic sense that Steve Jobs had will come along and put the pieces together right---or at least, put the available pieces on a worthy roadmap.