Hello everyone,

I’ve been wondering, why has no one built an entirely free (as in freedom) computer yet? For humans to be unable to share each other’s knowledge to build one of the most important technologies ever created for society, how is it that we have yet to have full knowledge about how our systems operate?

I get that companies are basically the ones to blame, and I know there are alternatives like the Talos II by Raptor Computing, but still, how do we not have publicly available full schematics for just one modern computer? I’m talking down to firmware-level stuff like proprietary ECs, microcode, hard drive/SSD firmware, network controllers, etc. How do we not have a fully open system yet?

  • BestBouclettes@jlai.lu
    371·
    1 year ago

    Some people are trying (RISC-V for instance) but as others pointed out it’s really really hard, especially if you want to make the whole computer free and open source.
    First you need an architecture for pretty much all components if you want it to be truly free (how the CPU, ram, motherboard, etc. work, on paper).
    Then you need to manufacture these components, and making a modern CPU is insanely complex, even more so when you have a brand new architecture.
    Then you need software (firmware, drivers, etc.), and again, on a new architecture, stuff will work differently than it does on existing stuff. So people need to learn how to work on your platform to make software. And obviously you need to make it available to people by selling it somehow.
    It’s technically doable but the investment (both monetary and humanly) would be massive and not really something anyone can start on their own as a hobby.