Voice of the Masses: How important is open hardware?
Free and open source software has taken hold in virtually every area of computing. We have free operating systems in the form of GNU/Linux and the *BSDs, we have free desktop and server software, and even free mobile platforms like Replicant. But what about open hardware?
Our choices here are extremely limited in comparison. If you want a computer that’s fully free software down to the BIOS, and endorsed by the Free Software Foundation, you’ve only got a handful to choose from. So should we start fighting for more open hardware? Should we be petitioning vendors to release firmware code under FOSS licenses? Or is it a side-issue, and we should stay focused on software?
Let us know your thoughts below (and if you try to fun a fully FOSS setup), and we’ll read out the best comments in our upcoming podcast recording!
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About The Author
Mike Saunders
Mike stores his data by printing out hex dumps and laminating the sheets. He's the author of The Haynes Linux Manual and the creator of MikeOS, an operating system hand-built from assembly language.
open hardware is as important as open source.
uefi has shown that we need to go cap in hand to ms to get keys to run other oses on our own hardware. considering the animosity towards open source this is unacceptable. half assed video card support also doesn’t help. if you can’t open it, you don’t own it.
If one wants control, one needs information=connections to what one wants to control.
As far as I understand, we want control over computers, thus we need information on it, we need to be able to access and modify it. Open hardware makes this easier, closed hardware makes this harder.
Others may want to control our control over computers (as do we, for different purposes), thus want to prevent access on information avout them. Open harware makes this harder, closed hardware makes this easier.
Both sides basically want the same: control.
It may be argued that objectively, this is not important.
We are humans, and need to be subjective=we need to choose=we need definitions.
Thus I must choose.
I prefer the option of controlling computers myself.
To achieve this goal, open harware can be called important.
Open Hardware is necessary to ensure the future privacy and security of users.
Running a CPU that contains unverifiable code is tantamount to running a closed binary as root. It’s a big single point of failure that requires full trust of the manufacturer.
Currently every computer system requires you to trust the manufacturer, but the less trust that is required the more trust-worthy the company. We should certainly be putting pressure on companies to be as open as possible.
I think the security community should be pushing this issue harder than anyone else. Their clients are the ones at risk. They could also supply third party verification of the firmware.
I had written a comment here. But then it disappeared. It seems appropriate. Unless our tools are predictable and verifiable, my voice may never be heard.
Hi Rob, we haven’t removed anything from you! Nor was anything marked as spam.
Hello Mike. No worries. I probably pressed the wrong button. I sounded a little too much like Cory Doctorow for my own comfort. Still, it set my mind to thinking about voice simply being left out. I did not mean to suggest I had ACTUALLY had my coment censored. Keep up the great work guys.
I did not see this as a problem until stories came out about the NSA hacked hard-drives and Lenovo. Seriously Lenovo? Seriously? http://boingboing.net/2015/09/22/yet-another-pre-installed-spyw.html
Hardware is a different market then software. Software can be produced at no cost other than someones time. Hardware on the other hand has physical costs. For this reason I dont think Open Hardware is feasible. With all that being said I would love nothing more then to know that I am totally secure from hardware all the way up through my operating system. Im not holding my breath though.
Open hardware is important but very difficult.
I own two pieces of open hardware – a Neo Freerunner, and an OpenPandora.
The freerunner was an unmitigated disaster, and I’m glad the company folded. Their attempt at an open source phone was admirable, but the hardware was buggy and the software was utterly horrible, so much so that about 8 months after getting my freerunner I went out and bought a nokia so that I actually had a useable phone.
The OpenPandora had it’s difficulties too, the main problem was the length of time it took to get it produced and the numerous problems they had. I’m glad I’m not one of the people who preordered it. But their approach was vastly superior to Openmoko’s approach – they were upfront and open about the problems they had, and they delayed it until it was right, and it shows – the OpenPandora is goddamn awesome, and I can’t wait for the successor to be available.
One of the biggest problems in the open hardware world is making things competitive and affordable. Both the pandora and the freerunner were quite expensive given their specs. Indeed, the only reason I didn’t order a Neo900 is the price.
The big problem is demand – unless you can produce a million units, it’s very expensive to produce hardware, and this needs to be passed on to the user in order to break even. So you end up with open platforms which are overpriced and underspecced, making them an even more niche product than they would be otherwise – there are a bunch of people out there who would love open hardware, but not so much that they’ll accept something which isn’t competitive in terms of price and specs.
I don’t have an answer, it’s a chicken-and-egg problem: There doesn’t seem to be a huge number of people out there interested in buying open hardware, so there’s not much open hardware, so there aren’t that many people interested in open hardware.
One solution might be to do what the console makers do to get into the market: mass-produce something, market it heavily, and sell it at a loss initially. Microsoft didn’t make a profit on the xbox hardware for years. Unfortunately, few of us have the resources of microsoft, and those who do don’t seem to be very interested in making open hardware. I think the key for anybody who did something like this would be to make it something that everybody wants regardless of whether they care about open hardware or not. It needs a killer app, or killer specs, or something.
The success of the raspberry pi is encouraging. I think that in the long run open hardware will become a more common thing, but I think it’s going to be a long, hard road.
Open hardware is essential to free software as others have mentioned. and it should not be an issue jsut because one neeeds to pay, if anything that should make it easier, everything is produced in china and they copy designs in there own market, it should be the support, integration of ideas, and comunities we are paying for not acces to a secret layout of hardware, a solid idea that a combination of hardware is backed by lonterm support for security and usability. Not just thrown away. a new smart phone costs several hundred dollars what if you got a hassle free up grade for 20 to the open software that did not require a user to root and mod their hardware voiding the warranty. that extended the life a another 2 years. and saved you 180, I would take that.
It is becoming increasingly apparent that open hardware is going to be crucial to having open software. If we don’t have the ability to inspect the firmware or change it, we won’t be able to load the software we want to use or gurauntee that we are only running what we want to run. I would be willing to take a hit on performance to own open hardware. At the same time I don’t want to be using equipment that is itself used or old because it is more likely to break down than newer equipment.
Would love to use Distros that use Open Firmware, however the state of open firmware available is pretty dire at best. Trisquel having said that is doing a good job with its distro. In fact Puppy Linux has started to have a version based on it Librepup and the idea of Free software Distros is catching on based on the response to Librepup.
Free hardware (as in freedom) is just as important as free software. Hardware manufacturers should be forced to release schematics, source code written in hardware description language, etc. Proprietary hardware should be banned just like proprietary software.
But even if all schematics would be available for free – which would already be a big step – who’s got the means to actually make something ? Something significant that is. Only the hardware manufacturers can – which bring us back to the trust issue.
So unless we can print our own cpu’s at home, I’m afraid this is still a dream. But who knows …
Open Hardware is very important mostly because the line between hardware and software is getting more and more blurred. There has been a trend in hardware design for a while where what would previously have been a hardware circuit is now a programmable chip performing the logic.
I help run a Repair Café where we try and help people understand their electronic devices and help them repair them. I think this point is illustrated by one thing I saw recently. A quite expensive ironing press, on opening it up we found issues with a thermal fuse that had blown, but even after replacing this it still didn’t work. We found that the logic was implemented in a PIC chip, that was not working. Replacing the chip is not possible without having the firmware, and the manufacturer had gone out of business.
Open software needs open hardware and open hardware needs open software.
It is the next major issue in securing our freedom. Too many companies use things like DRM and copyright laws to lock down the product to the point that you don’t own it any longer, you only get a license to use it. If you can’t fix it and tinker with it, you don’t own it.