On 26/04/12 11:53, Ben Finney wrote:

Chris Samuel writes:

Chris, are you ordering one? I get annoyed with online stores that insist I create an account in order merely to buy something, and ZaReason appears to be yet another one of those.

No, only interested in a netbook at the moment.

But, CyanogenMod isn't free software, remember; it has a higher proportion of free software, but is still very much a non-free operating system and AFAIK has all the non-free drivers as Android.

As I wrote in the blog, they're working with the Software Freedom Conservancy is "pure" (to use their words).

Have ZaReason made the device so that all the hardware works without any non-free software (programs, firmware, whatever) at all?

Yes, they have said to me that they chose the Allwinner A10 because it was the most open SoC they could find. I am not clear about the GPU driver (I presume they are using the Lima Projects fully open one) but they do appear to be making a strong effort to ensure it is fully open (and I suspect they know that if they market it as that and it isn't they will quickly get found out). cheers, Chris -- Chris Samuel : http://www.csamuel.org/ : Melbourne, VIC

On 26/04/12 13:16, Chris Samuel wrote:

Yes, they have said to me that they chose the Allwinner A10 because it was the most open SoC they could find. I am not clear about the GPU driver

Asked via Twitter, their response was: https://twitter.com/#!/ZaReasonNZ/status/195359671450742785 @chris_bloke Initially there may be some binary blobs. Lima isn't far enough along at this time, but we have high hopes for it. -- Chris Samuel : http://www.csamuel.org/ : Melbourne, VIC