Pioneering CPU Efforts to Liberate Laptop Hardware

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Todd Weaver

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Purism’s Librem 15 laptop will be the first to ship with a modern Intel CPU that is not locked down to require proprietary firmware. This marks one of the largest hurdles to a laptop that runs 100 percent free software and firmware.

Purism’s Librem 15 will ship with an Intel CPU fused to run unsigned BIOS code, allowing a future where free software can replace the proprietary, digitally signed, BIOS binaries.

Commenting on this boon to user freedom, Dr. Richard M. Stallman, president of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), states,

“Getting rid of the signature checking is an important step. While it doesn’t give us free code for the firmware, it means that users will really have control of the firmware once we get free code for it.”

Based in San Francisco, Purism was founded precisely to overcome this and the remaining hurdles to reinstating user freedom, privacy, and control in computer hardware. The Librem 15 laptop is the first in Purism’s line of products and has until the end of January to reach a $250,000 funding goal that makes manufacturing the first batch possible.

Portland, Oregon-based Crowd Supply is a curated crowdfunding and e-commerce company that offers product development as a platform. It has launched more than 70 products, many with strong ties to the free and open source software and hardware communities.