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?
To be fair, there is open source hardware- Arduino and whatnot. But a microcontroller is a lot simpler than a full computer.
Those devices aren’t completely open though. The boards are, but the components they include, namely the processor, are not at all open source.
A microchip, even something as simple as an Arduino – which is an atmega 32 – is literally impossible to make in your garage. The machines that make the chips have multi million dollar HVAC just to get the dust out, before they even worry about the hardware.