apply TERES-I for Respects Your Freedom certification

[DannyS]

Hello,

I would like to ask if you have considered applying TERES-I for the Respects Your Freedom hardware product certification that is granted by the Free Software Foundation (as you know that is organization promoting copyleft founded by Richard Stallman creator of GPL).

There are people who are even now using modified Lenovo Thinkpads X200, X200s, T400, T500 from 2008, T400s from 2009 and X200T from 2010; modified ASUS KGPE D16 and ASUS KCMA D8 from 2012 as they are the only laptops and motherboards respectively that have been awarded with Respects Your Freedom certificate. However, as you may see this hardware is getting too old and unreliable as it not in production any longer. Probably I would not overestimate too much if I would say that TERES-I can be comparable them when it comes to performance (maybe freshly new they would be stronger but I doubt it now after being in use for years) and probably TERES-I is also much more comfortable to use as it is not a 12 years old hardware.

I think it would be worth for you to acquiring Respects Your Freedom certification if possible as then you would probably get a lot of publicity on websites lie linux.com, itsfoss.com and others that targets exactly people interested in hardware that you make and that might direct many new customers to you. Furthermore, having Open Hardware Laptop with Respects Your Freedom certification would be dream come true for many people interested in FLOSS.

If you would be interested in certificating TERES-I please read these requirements and if you do fulfill them, you can contact licensing@fsf.org.

The main requirement are:

• "All the product software must be free software. The product software includes all software that the seller includes in the product, or provides with the product, or recommends for use in conjunction with the product, or steers users towards installation in the product." (with exception to secondary embedded processors)
• "The seller must give the user, along with the product software source code, the practical capability to install replacement software for any and all of the free software in the device."
• "In addition to being free, all the product software must be buildable using 100% free software that's released to the public, on a 100% free operating system that is released to the public. In other words, a user should be able to rebuild all the product software, and replace everything on the programmable levels, using only readily available free software."
• "Any generally useful technical documentation about the product, such as user or developer manuals, must be released under a free license."

As far as I know TERES-I already does all of this and maybe you will "just" have to ensure compatibility with one of the FSF-endorsed 100%-free GNU/Linux distribution.
Actually, when you look at companies that are already trying hard for years to get the certificate such as Purism that plans to "be the first manufacturer of brand new laptops to ever receive the Free Software Foundation's Respects Your Freedoms ("RYF") certification", you might now in comparison with Purism get the RYF almost effortlessly (as you had already done the hardest part and designed the hardware yourself, of course). So why not to use the chance, overtake them and let the Olimex to be the first?

Danny

[olimex]

Thanks for the tip Danny.
To be honest I know about RYF, but we are small company doing thousands of interesting things with no so big team and sometimes we overlook possible marketing channels like this one:) being too busy to develop new and interesting stuff.
We do OSHW not to make noise with it and to claim we are world first done this and that, but more way of life and how we do see things.
Many people do open source (even extremely useless and silly stuff) just be listed somewhere, other claim they are open even when they just publish PDF schematic. If you check OSHWA site we have maybe 300 OSHW products but we have listed less than 20 there as this need efforts and time which we would like to spend on some useful stuff.
People know that we do OSHW and even if we didn't list all these on the OSHWA web.
The problem is that to do these listings is not so exciting like to develop new stuff, so blame me for this
Tsvetan

[olimex]

I sent today email to Igor from Armbian project, asking him does Armbian current state pass the RYF requirements.

Igor reply that except of the WiFi everything is open source. The WiFi firmware inside the WiFi SOC is not, but he don't know if this is problem, as there is statement "with exception to
secondary embedded processors" so people who know law better may be able to interpret what does this means. He thinks all Olimex boards which run Armbian and do not have embedded WiFi are compliant with RYF, Teres has build in WiFi based on Realtek chip which has embedded non-free firmware inside, so may not comply with RYF requirements.

[gregh]

He thinks all Olimex boards which run Armbian and do not have embedded WiFi are compliant with RYF

Would be great to have a FSF RYF certification for the boards running linux.
The certificate is an easy way to find ethical hardware.