[Libre-soc-dev] Firefox on PowerPC

[whygee at f-cpu.org]

On 2021-10-16 19:38, Umberto Cerrato wrote:
> Hi yg,
Hi Umberto :-)

> I 100% agree and understand what you say. And I think we all agree
> with the fact that having an operative system ready but not user
> applications does not make a “product” appealing for the masses.
> And this is something lkcl and libre-soc knows well. But from my
> understanding libre-soc is not targeting the consumer market directly.
> Instead it fits other markets too, where f.e. having a working browser
> does not matter.
I get what you said.
Now, we must not underestimate "hackers" :-)
me and many other Hackaday.io swellers will see a "Libre POWER chip"
and will want to coerce it into "anything that the OEM didn't intend".

I think that's the whole point of "Libre".
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
"the users have the freedom to run, copy,
distribute, study, change and improve the software."
The purpose is to get a system that is much more
adapted to one's needs.

Industry works with broad brush strokes,
overlooking many details to reach economy of scale.
The selection of the POWER architecture was driven
by the then availability of user-level SW.

And these days, the web browser is the new OS...

"Le vendeur propose, le client dispose":
Libre-SoC provides some percieved "value" to the market
but the end user will always decide in the end,
and would even re-purpose devices as they wish,
that's the untold rule of the industry.

I don't hide my unwillingness to using POWER.
But if the SW base can be kept solid,
it's good for the project as a whole.

> -u
yg