On Thu, 23 Aug 2018, Martin Steigerwald wrote:

> Antony Stone - 23.08.18, 00:04:
> > On Wednesday 22 August 2018 at 23:32:28, Martin Steigerwald wrote:
> > > Don Wright - 22.08.18, 21:56:
> > > > El Reg has [1]published a disagreement between a Debian maintainer
> > > > and Intel over changes to license terms in the latest CPU
> > > > microcode updates. The added terms (see comments) appear to
> > > > attach liability to both Debian and mirror sites if the end user
> > > > violates certain new restrictions regarding benchmarking. Debian
> > > > has chosen not to play.
> > > >
> > > > [1]
> > > > https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/08/21/intel_cpu_patch_licence/
> > >
> > > Rant opened:
> > >
> > > /me prays for the end of proprietary CPUs.
> >
> > <good reasoning snipped>
> >
> > > Speed over quality. – Stop it already.
> > >
> > > Rant closed.
> >
> > Personally, I agree with you, but just me and you as individual
> > persons isn't going to make any difference.
>
> If people thought this throughout all of human history, we would not
> have computers at all. And also still think the Earth is flat and in a
> center of the world / universe.

Me and many other Devuan developers agree with the good reasoning. I
also share Martin's optimism on what we can do.

To start with, our Devuan project has always prioritised ARM support,
something visible from the many specific hardware targets we already
cover, one of the biggest innovations we brought to Debian, often
overlooked by journalists reviewing our distro.

CenturionDan has also plans to setup a PPC build farm soon.

At Dyne we have done many projects involving ARM board deployements
and we have more planned in the future, also acting as mentors for
European startups. In these endeavours we recommend use of open
hardware (boards that have no closed-source firmware blobs) which
restricts the choice to a few ARM boards.

This brings us close to antagonize the Intel lobby that pollutes the
European Commission. Sadly enough, those who race against this giant
have not united in solidarity, nor we have constituted our own lobby.

To conclude, I believe the pressure cannot be built by consumers, as
someone also mentions in the thread, but by industrial players in the
field of innovation and by policy analysts and lobbyists at a more
political layer.

My wish is that strong industrial players like ARM understand how
valuable could be to ally with us and a few others in the open source
world.

ciao