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A comment on Is the FSF Fighting the Previous War?. Parent comment

Re:Is the FSF Fighting the Previous War? by josephcsible on Saturday October 08, 2022 @12:25AM (#33129780)
It's perfectly okay for you to put GPLv3 software in ROM that nobody can ever modify and then sell me the hardware. What's not okay is selling me hardware where you can modify the software after the fact, but I can't. And it's also okay for your hardware to detect if I modified the software. It just can't refuse to work if I did.
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Re:Is the FSF Fighting the Previous War? by charcircuit on Saturday October 08, 2022 @03:30AM (#33130516)
And this is where the FSF makes the weird trade off that they prefer to not have security updates as that's more "free" than being able to get security updates from the manufacturer. Either way you can't update it, but at least in the scenario the FSF opposes the users are able to be more secure.
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Re:Is the FSF Fighting the Previous War? by bheadmaster on Saturday October 08, 2022 @03:57AM (#33130612)
True. FSF doesn't support taking the freedom away from users in the name of security.

> at least in the scenario the FSF opposes the users are able to be more secure

That's quite questionable. What if someone steals the manufacturer keys? Then people with unmodifyable devices would be more secure.

But anyway that's besides the point since FSF is against taking the freedom away from the users under the veil of "security" anyway.

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Re:Is the FSF Fighting the Previous War? by froh on Saturday October 08, 2022 @12:42PM (#33133791)
this has nothing to do with security updates. any vendor is free to ship security updates however vendors often decide to refuse updates to "tainted" devices.
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Re:Is the FSF Fighting the Previous War? by josephcsible on Sunday October 09, 2022 @08:28PM (#33146649)
That's not what the FSF meant the exception to be used for. That's basically the manufacturers abusing a loophole.
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Re:Is the FSF Fighting the Previous War? by froh on Saturday October 08, 2022 @12:37PM (#33133736)
that scenario doesn't exist, non-flashable rom.

only. the other scenario, "vendor can update I can't" is relevant.

and that detection mechanism is called "secure boot".

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Re:Is the FSF Fighting the Previous War? by josephcsible on Sunday October 09, 2022 @08:27PM (#33146640)
> that scenario doesn't exist, non-flashable rom.

Of course they do. One example is pressed DVDs.

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