OpenSource Firmware is Important
@Jessie Frazelle lays out why that is. If you really care about the things you ship, watch this!
Below I am just extracting some of the things that I find that important, that I need to extract them (so I can quicker re-read them again).
Security First, at Least try Your Best
Just watching the first 5 minutes of her talk, and seeing her
dotfiles using docker run
all over is so coherent. She cares about having control over the software and hardware she uses and this is well visible in the docker-using dotfiles. If it is
audacity,
aws-cli,
chrome,
figma or
many others
there is a docker run for it. So good!
I also gave a talk on just using Docker to have a reproducable environment and also to have less things clutter my computer, but most responses were very skeptical. Great to see that she actually took it way further. This encourages me too to continue pushing this path. Thanks for the inpiration @Jessie.
Talk to Each Other
Around minute 22 she comes to a conclusion, which does not only apply to firmware producing companies, but to many companies (Hint: Conway's Law, as she also pointed out).
Connecting the Dots
Continuing listening to her talk right after the phrase linked above, she continues reasoning why working on firmware is so exciting to her and she sees a big opportunity there. I learned about her company oxide.computer a couple weeks ago, when I saw @Steve Klabnik join them. In Oxide Computer it looks like she is doing exactly that. Fixing the things she is concerned about in her talk. Again, very inspiring!
Closing
If you are thinking of, or even building something and even shipping hardware (that you don't control) think twice and watch this talk.
It is very nice when things are minimal and they just do what they are supposed to do.
See below how she concludes this talk. If you are not convinced this makes sense, watch the talk I believe she has a VERY good point there.
Don't 🚢 💩.