
Install Fests: What to Do about the Deal with the Devil - lelf
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/install-fest-devil
======
AdmiralAsshat
So, as a card-carrying member of the FSF, I'll weigh in. When I pull out my
FSF card that contains a tiny flash drive with a Trisquel image on it [0],
most people think it's incredibly cool and often allow me to demo it on some
old PC/laptop they have lying around.

The "demo" of Trisquel goes pretty well for about ten minutes (the DE is quite
easy for people used to the Win 9x paradigm to understand), then I inevitably
get to the point where they want to see the browser or something that requires
internet, and it doesn't work. It doesn't work because there are _very_ few
desktops or laptops that ship with a wireless card supporting a completely
free driver that Trisquel will ship. And that's where the conversation usually
ends. Because if the free OS can't let the computer do the things the end-user
expects it to do, they won't use it. It doesn't matter if they align
practically or philosophically with the FOSS movement, a computer that can't
access the internet is just a toy or a paperweight to them.

[0][https://www.fsf.org/associate/benefits](https://www.fsf.org/associate/benefits)

~~~
sqrt17
> a computer that can't access the internet is just a toy or a paperweight to
> them.

which would be a thing unheard of if we were still in 1993. We aren't, and you
find people happily using iOS or Android devices that do mostly web browsing
and video watching and would functionally be a toy or a paperweight if you
transported them back to 1993.

Computing has changed in the last 25 years. Paradoxically, more people are
using FOSS than before while fewer would subscribe to the kind of Free
Software purism (totalitarism?) that the FSF advocates. Windows running a
(GNU/)Linux subsystem is a victory of Open Source, but a defeat for the Free
Software movement.

Which brings us to

> if they align practically or philosophically with the FOSS movement

and I'd call this a ruse - the Open Source movement developed as a
countercurrent to FSF's ideology around Free Software mostly in the shape of
people that liked Free Software (both as in Freedom and as in Beer) as well as
software licensed under more liberal licenses but did not see the idea of
Copyleft as central to their enterprise. There is a FOSS movement, replete
with sympathisers and drama and everything around it, but it's at best a
strict superset of the Free Software movement that also contains people with
non-FSF-compatible opinions.

~~~
code_duck
If you took an iOS or Android device back to 1993 with no internet, it would
have a camera, photo editing capabilities, text editing (desktop publishing,
with the right software), music synthesis and editing, a rich game platform, a
guitar tuner, a music player, and so on. In short, everything we used
computers for back then and more, since phones are just mini-computers
combined with cameras. That web browsing is available on top of all that local
functionality, and is the most popular, shows why people use our phones 24/7.

But I’m not sure how this is related to a desktop OS in 2019 that can’t access
the internet. Sure, a modern GNU/Linux desktop system would have been amazing
in 1993 with no internet too.

~~~
swiftcoder
It has significantly fewer of those things if you don't have wifi access to
download them from the store to begin with. Since software doesn't come on
floppy disks anymore...

~~~
code_duck
I’m not sure how we’re supposed to complete the entire story because it also
requires time travel or something. I assumed that we can assume that the
necessary software was available, just not internet access.

~~~
eltoozero
How about an island, or any truly remote location on earth (or in space) that
may lack broadband.

~~~
kkarakk
how did you get there without preparation? no one carries around a mobile
phone with 0 apps, the first thing you do is download all the essentials

------
scrumbledober
I'm all for OSS, but reading things like this really make me think of the
community as totally nuts. I don't have the time in my life to get this worked
up over OSS, and I don't have the time to avoid the smallest paid software
package. I guess I am glad that a community like this exists to push OSS
forwards, but I wonder how much this pushes away more moderate people. Would
the ecosystem be as easy for a moderate like me to enter were it not for these
fringe envelope pushers? Would it be slightly harder to enter, but offset by
the larger number of developers not alienated by the apparent gung-ho anti-
establishment attitude? In the end I think it's a benefit but it does push me
away.

~~~
noir_lord
Nuts or not they fight the good fight on our behalf by acting as an anchor at
the other end of the spectrum.

Even if I’m not as ardent about it as a beneficiary of open source in all its
forms I can understand the viewpoint of those who are.

There is value in that I think.

~~~
a-nikolaev
Richard Stallman is important as a visionary. I think, his views may be really
impractical short-term, but he is often spot-on long-term. Taking him
seriously and listening to his opinion is worth the effort, I think.

~~~
laughinghan
Interesting. What are some examples of things he predicted in the past that
were really impractical short-term, but turned out to be spot-on long-term?

~~~
a-nikolaev
I don't have specific examples off the top of my head. This is just the
realization I had after reading and watching his talks and articles. You can
google "stallman was right" and "stallman was wrong", and see where he got it
right or not.

I did some search, and this discussion seems helpful and exactly on this
topic:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3417033](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3417033)

------
boucher
This is a fairly amusing read. Favorite quote:

    
    
        This devil would be a human being disguised to teach a moral lesson with a theatrical metaphor, so let's not take the metaphor too far. I think we would do well not to say that users are “selling their souls” if they install nonfree software—rather, part of their own freedom is what they forfeit. We don't need to exaggerate to teach the point...
    

I'm sympathetic to the FSF's goals, but I think they're desire for ideological
purity prevents them from achieving meaningful wins. Increasing the
availability and desirability of Free software shouldn't have to mean total
exclusion of all non-Free software.

As an industry, I think we should be more troubled by devices that aren't even
allowed to run code without special permission from some third party. The App
Store is a sad state of affairs in my opinion.

~~~
smelendez
That part confused me. Having someone in a Devil costume is going to be scary,
confusing or offensive to many people, so if it's not a great metaphor, why
not pick another one?

I think it's better to skip certain classes metaphors for this kind of event:
religion, sex, death, disease (cancer, etc.) probably chief among them.

~~~
krapp
> Having someone in a Devil costume is going to be scary, confusing or
> offensive to many people

No it isn't. People sell devil costumes to _children_ for Halloween. Almost no
one is confused or scared by the sight of someone in a devil costume, just as
almost no one is going to see someone dressed as Thor and actually likely
believe the god of thunder is walking among them.

------
neilv
I don't know how this situation with most WiFi hardware being FSF-hostile will
ever change. People who care (be they end users, enterprises, Linux kernel
developers, or distro developers) don't provide sufficient motivation to the
manufacturers.

Part of the reason might be that, even if one is generally aligned with the
FSF's goals, the distinction the FSF makes, _based on where the closed
firmware is stored_ , isn't very compelling, IMHO. Most people need a good
reason to incur the high costs of FSF-friendliness.

(I've compromised on this, myself. In 2010, the Debian Live variant utility
stick distro I made bundled the `non-free` drivers, since that was already a
problem then. Though I have bought FSF-friendly `ath9k` PCIe WiFi cards for my
own use. And I even went through the massive headache of converting several
ThinkPad X200 units to Coreboot, which let me put FSF-friendly mini-PCIe WiFi
cards in them. I never would've done the latter, had I known how much work it
would be.)

------
mindslight
If someone is going to an install fest, their technical skills are not very
strong. Especially in this day and age where plentiful devices means not
rendering your only computer inoperable, but being able to follow along with
online instructions! That user's effective freedom is very low, even if
they're sitting in front of a fully documented Free machine!

But they're _interested_ in taking a step in the right direction, even though
they will not reap the full benefits for quite some time. This must not be
squandered!

The problem here is that emphasizing the negative association still ties it to
GNU/Linux - first, the presence of a visible "devil", and second the
difficulty of being confronted with an overt looked-down-upon decision that is
not fully understood.

Rather, people respond better to the carrot. They _should_ be informed - they
might indeed have a different machine that would be a better fit for Linux.
And they should walk away knowing that the machine they have is not perfect
from a Freedom standpoint.

But how are they supposed to care enough to influence a purchasing decision,
especially of a new machine, if we make it difficult for them to become
accustomed to the benefits of Freedom? A machine loaded with all proprietary
blob drivers still showcases the _results_ of Freedom quite well - similar to
why there is such big business in taking Free software and locking it up with
DRM/HTTP, but I digress.

In general, RMS really needs to reconsider the nuance of how he applies his
philosophy to the modern world. While he has been extremely prescient and
unyielding for the overall war, he keeps wanting to fight the original battle
rather than many of the new fronts that have sprung up.

For example, he uses a T400 laptop - what storage device does it have? I
guarantee it runs non-free firmware from flash. There is little difference
between this and AMD's graphics firmware blob files, if the latter is only
ever loaded under Free control. Condemning the latter because it puts the blob
front and center in our faces is fundamentally a symptom of failing to flesh
out the paradigm of what applied Freedom means, and without that we cannot
hope to defend it!

~~~
admax88q
> what storage device does it have? I guarantee it runs non-free firmware from
> flash.

RMS is pretty consistently clear that software intended to be upgraded by the
end user must be free. Software/firmware that is not intended to ever be
changed or upgraded by the end user is more or less the same as circuitry and
outside the scope of the Free Software movement.

> There is little difference between this and AMD's graphics firmware blob
> files.

AMD's blobs are intended to be installed by the end user. Both the firmware
that you upload to the card when you use it, or binary drivers that run on
your main CPU. Those are both software that you receive and execute as an end
user which is fundamentally different from the gates and firmware fused into
your device.

~~~
mindslight
Except that firmware isn't "fused" into your device, but simply on an
undocumented flash chip - the days of windowed EPROM are long gone. So _RMS is
compromising_ here, in my opinion incorrectly.

If we stop talking about a device as being "Free" but rather use the FSF's
verbiage of "respects your freedom", then I would actually argue that AMD's
firmware blobs are more-RYF than SSD firmware. The former I can be pretty sure
AMD did a decent job at the code signing, meaning they're the only party that
can use the device to disrespect my freedom. Whereas the SSD firmware
interface remains more opaque, so there's a decent chance that anybody could
reverse engineer the SSD and surreptitiously modify the firmware on mine to
undermine my freedom!

Of course you can insulate yourself from the SSD by using full disk encryption
and considering your SATA controller a security boundary. And that's my entire
point - we need to evolve these definitions to incorporate this type of
nuance.

~~~
the_why_of_y
I don't see a difference between RYF-ness of CPU microcode and SSD firmware.
The main practical difference in the context of TFA is that distros typically
bundle CPU microcode but not SSD firmware, hence the question is unlikely to
come up in that context for SSD firmware, but that doesn't mean that it's not
a problem.

Btw, the AMD CPU microcode _is_ fused into the CPU, otherwise it wouldn't
boot; there's an additional SRAM area where the microcode update is applied;
for details see
[https://media.ccc.de/v/35c3-9614-inside_the_amd_microcode_ro...](https://media.ccc.de/v/35c3-9614-inside_the_amd_microcode_rom)

To elaborate on your last point, I'd always use software encryption with SSDs,
because with the opaque firmware wear-leveling it's essentially impossible to
be sure that anything is actually physically deleted from SSDs, and if it
isn't physically deleted it can be read by a custom firmware.

~~~
mindslight
I was referring to AMD's graphics cards. They have a binary firmware blob that
basically _must_ be loaded, but the loading itself is done by Free software. I
don't see how this is _any_ different from a RYF perspective than if AMD had
put another flash chip on the BOM for storing it cold. That is, assuming a
competent signature scheme for both.

So the card itself doesn't RYF, but it _can_ be used to display the output
from a RYF _computer_. And unfortunately barring a better graphics option
based on open firmware, these are the compromises we have to make. RMS
recognizes this - I just think the manner in which he framed the compromise is
a bit unnuanced and out of date. Rather than finding reasons to ignore least-
worst blobs, we should be talking about boundaries between Free/non-free
components.

SSDs are an interesting case, because the hard drive interface abstraction is
so simple and longstanding, we just kind of assume it's a good boundary. But
if you want to pop back into abstract Freedom land, imagine what the market
would look like if vendors weren't able to market around decommoditizing
software features. For example, if the FTL were done by Free software (perhaps
on the main CPU), there would be no worries about certain lines of drives
getting corrupted due to power failures!

(And yes, totally agree about FDE. I actually just changed my router back to
being a general purpose Linux box, and it felt quite odd installing that with
no FDE).

~~~
the_why_of_y
I'm sorry, no idea how I managed to jump from AMD GPUs to AMD CPUs :-)

------
misnome
This is absolutely Cuckoo, even for RMS.

Take people, probably leaning nontechnical who have an interest in trying OSS
and try to explicitly impose on them the concept that they are wrong and you
are right and they are 'dealing with the devil' if they don't see things your
way. They will be put off linux and the FOSS community for life.

It's not like we don't have years of evidence of what happens if you try to
impose your idea of politics on someone.

If you really want people to care, then you need to introduce them slowly, and
even then - without appreciating some sort of obstacle (like a technical user
trying to get their wifi or graphics cards working) I'm not sure it's so easy,
because most people have other priorities.

~~~
blihp
Unfortunately, this is absolutely in character for him. I also sort of hope
that people try what he's suggesting since it will almost certainly backfire.
It's not that I want him or the install fests to fail (I'm a big fan and user
of Debian), but rather it would be nice if the hard line folks would get a
clue and understand that they need to offer viable alternatives rather than
telling people to 'just say no'. Maybe lines of people waiting for 'the Devil'
would make that clear? (OK, probably nothing would change... but I can
dream...)

------
wmf
Yet another self-defeating idea from RMS. If someone asks for Linux, we should
either give them a broken version, refuse, or give them a lecture? Sad.

~~~
code_duck
Well, not exactly... the whole point of this idea is that they should provide
a way for the install to be completed, but make it clear that a moral
compromise is involved.

~~~
santoshalper
That will go really well. If there is one thing people love, it is moral
conundrums related to electronic appliances.

~~~
krageon
Don't forget the people lecturing them for the full 30 minutes that they're
busy installing a new OS.

~~~
code_duck
At least they’re getting a free computer service. One could compare it to the
missions that feed and house needy people, under the condition that they also
accept religious proselytization.

------
csdreamer7
Urgh... this is perhaps one of the worst positions for the FSF to take at this
point.

This is a position you take if 10% of the desktop market was already running a
mostly free operating system and APIs. (Making a distinction between GNU and
Chrome OS).

Once you have enough mindshare to expose people to what Free Software,
community developed software, software they can have control over (either by
learning how to program or being able to pay someone to do it). Then you push
to wipe out these crappy binary blobs.

At this point, with less than 1%, Microsoft could lock out every Linux user
from modern hardware by refusing to sign an UEFI kernel.

Things have gotten better. Dell provides a few Linux laptops for desktop
users. System76 is great... even if their machines look a little dated.
Steam's Proton is a godsend.

But the Linux desktop still hasn't broken out of the a few niche areas. Chrome
OS has more market share than all other desktop Linuxes. We haven't gotten
past 2% and in many Asian countries we are falling behind even more.

You can't tell people they are only ethical if they use a modern laptop
without working wifi. They won't care. A lot of people just don't care about
technology. They just want it to work! But once you reach 10%; you have
network effects people can rely on and feel confident about choosing a Free
Operating System. If you point out this Free Software sticker means it works
better for Linux/BSD/Haiku because you have control over the code that runs
your wifi/whatever, then people will care.

------
type0
> My new idea is that the install fest could allow the devil to hang around,
> off in a corner of the hall, or the next room. (Actually, a human being
> wearing sign saying “The Devil,” and maybe a toy mask or horns.) The devil
> would offer to install nonfree drivers in the user's machine to make more
> parts of the computer function ...

Oh, but this should only be suitable if it's done with FreeBSD and not some
Gnuuh-slash-leenacks.

------
santoshalper
The degree to which Richard Stallman lives on another planet, entirely
divorced from the reality of human behavior, cannot be overstated.

We can't even get people to ditch facebook when it is obviously and actively
harmful to them on almost every dimension because people simply do not care.
The idea that any of them would futz around trying to compile drivers from
source code is ludicrous.

------
ebg13
This problem is why I use [https://fiendish.github.io/The-Debian-Gotham-
Needs/](https://fiendish.github.io/The-Debian-Gotham-Needs/) for downloading
Debian ISOs, because I know that I'm going to need nonfree firmware for it to
actually do the things that I want it to do (and finding the right ISO on the
Debian website is a godawful nightmare).

I think the page takes the most rational approach by informing the person
about the danger to user freedoms imposed by non-free software while, and this
is very important, letting the person just get on with their life right now.

Stallman's proposal sounds...cartoonish and annoying and IMO ultimately
harmful. I think the only way to get people who aren't already dedicated to
want to use free software is if using it doesn't make them annoyed first.

~~~
oda
How is it a nightmare? The site you linked literally just links to one of the
images under here [https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-
in...](https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-including-
firmware) , and not even the most useful one. It'd be more appropriate to link
to the multi-arch image because there are many Bay Trail era devices stuck
with a wonky 32 bit UEFI / 64 bit processor combination.

~~~
ebg13
> _How is it a nightmare?_

Explain how to get from [https://debian.org](https://debian.org) to the right
download link. Measure how many clicks it involves, how much knowing exactly
the right thing to look for it involves, how many paragraphs you have to wade
through, how much backtracking if you go down the not obviously wrong but
still wrong nonetheless path it involves. Can you even get to it from the "Get
Debian" page without halting a download, truncating the url, and then digging
around in a directory tree? I'm not sure, but I don't think so. In short, take
yourself outside of your "I already know the right answer" head and approach
it from someone else's perspective. The fact that your answer is "just use
this arcane url that doesn't mean anything, is hard or impossible to find from
the landing page even for an experienced person, and also isn't unambiguously
googlable without exactly the right techno jargon" is striking to me.

The Debian onboarding experience for normal people is terrible.

> _It 'd be more appropriate to link to the multi-arch image because there are
> many..._

I disagree with your use of the word "many" and its relevance and whether
multiarch solves more problems than it causes, but I acknowledge your beliefs.
( * shrug * )

------
thothamon
Ugh, I think you get to pick between "strict purity" and something other than
strict purity -- you can't have both. You can't deliberately tolerate
something you deem to be devilish without becoming morally soiled by it. You
can't perform an act that you call evil, or tolerate and implicitly encourage
the act, and then in the next breath condemn it.

Either you have to maintain strict purity, or you have to acknowledge on some
level that real life is not especially compatible with strict purity, and
sometimes compromise is, at a minimum, necessary and to some degree desirable.

There's no logical way around this, and trying to force there to be a logical
way around it gives you this kind of wink wink, nod nod, say-no-more sort of
idea.

------
rblatz
What distro are they installing at an install fest? I assume the users going
to these would typically be in the lower half of the tech savviness
distribution. So a user friendly distro like Ubuntu or Mint would make sense,
but they include non-free coode in them.

If they install some weird hobby distro, that doesn't have a large community
around it to help support users I'd expect to scare users entirely away from
Linux.

~~~
jackbravo
And those distros usually have a checkbox on their installation wizards asking
whether or not you want to install non-free software.

[https://www.2daygeek.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/05/ubuntu-1...](https://www.2daygeek.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/05/ubuntu-15-04-installation-steps-screenshot-3.png)

------
yongjik
Is "install fest" actually a thing? I thought people just download whatever OS
they want to install these days...?

~~~
WalterGR
It was a thing in the 90s.

Is it still a thing? I don’t know. Probably on college campuses, organized by
comp sci majors.

