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Richard Stallman calls for hardware manufacturer ratings

In a post to the info-gnu list, Free Software Foundation founder
Richard Stallman calls for volunteers to set up a web page that
would rate how friendly hardware manufacturers are to free
software.

Below is Stallman‘s complete
post.



From rms@gnu.org Tue Nov  3 17:21:50 1998
Date: Sun, 1 Nov 1998 12:50:05 -0500
From: Richard Stallman 
To: info-gnu@gnu.org
Subject: Rating hardware manufacturers
Resent-Date: Tue, 3 Nov 1998 17:24:28 -0500
Resent-From: info-gnu-request@gnu.org

The GNU project is looking for volunteers to put together and
afterward update web page that would rate various hardware
manufacturers about how friendly they are to free software.

We have complete free operating systems for many of today's computers;
whether we have them for tomorrow's computers depends on whether we
can get the hardware specs for them.  This page will help people
choose the hardware that free software supports; it will also help the
community reward the hardware developers that do cooperate with us,
and thus encourage others to begin.

The aim is to be as complete as possible--to list as many
manufacturers and products as possible, and state (1) whether the
manufacturer has published the specs, and (2) whether free drivers
exist for the hardware.

If you would like to work on this project, and you have the broad
familiarity with available hardware and the drivers to support it,
and you're willing to put substantial effort into the job,
please send me email.

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