[1] http://linux-sunxi.org/GPL_Violations
[2] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/05/chine...
I only use the devices with kernels from trustable sources, like Debian. The A20-Olinuxino-Micro works already quite good with Debian out of the box. It is even recommended by FreedomBox.[1]
Because mainling for the A64 isn't at a usable state right now, I'm holding back on buying a Teres-1.
With the current ecosystem, it‘s just much cheaper to mix and match commercial off the shelf solutions that are way too powerful for the job than custom building an optimized solution, because it „just works“.
Heck, I‘ll take a Raspberry Pi over an Arduino any day to automate a simple relay, just because with real Go and Linux I can use the same tooling I‘m using every day at work.
That part gives me the impression of a fatalist stance, and I see that waaay too often. When everybody does x, but doing y gives some profit, people are all interested. But if it's doing y for some other reason, then it's always the "that battle is lost", or "the majority will never change". Argh! It is quite irrelevant if the majority buys random shiny devices or not. What matters only is if there are enough customers of good devices.
I'm sorry, but fuck 99% of the population. They're not the makers or creators, they are already well served by what's out there. I am truly grateful to have open options and other people who realize the power and freedom of truly open hardware. I'll gladly pay the costs to not cede that independence.
I don't think this is a good example as for many people there are far more good reasons to pick up Arduino over RPi in this scenario. With LinuxBoot the question is far more complicated. If there is a vendor using it, and if it's done properly, you won't even notice a difference.
The issue is that 'firmware' actually means many different blobs of software in various ROMs spread throughout the system, from disk controllers to GPUs to memory controllers to NIC and so on.
You will never be able to verify you have full control over your system unless all these firmware have the ability to be reflashed/replaced. LinuxBoot/Coreboot are a step in the direction, but without major concessions from hardware vendors this is an uphill battle.