Respecting Your Freedom with Refurbished Devices

Open hardware is still hard to find. Usually, the best you can find is devices that run free software – and even they are scarce. The best resource is the Free Software Foundation's Respects Your Freedom (RYF] certification [1] (Figure 1), which for several years has maintained a small list of devices that run free software. In June 2017, the RYF list more than doubled as the Romanian company Technoethical, formerly known as Tehnoetic [2], received 16 certifications for its products.

Figure 1: Technoethical sells 16 of the 26 devices that the Free Software Foundation (FSF) lists as completely free-licensed.

Technoethical was founded by Tiberiu Turbureanu in 2013. In an interview with Linux Pro Magazine, Tiberiu tells how he discovered free software as he was finishing high school. Soon, he was reading about the GNU/Linux philosophy and becoming involved with organizing free software events, first with Ceata (Ceata elibereaza artele si tehnologiile actuale, a recursive acronym meaning "Ceata liberates art and current technologies") [3]. In 2013, Ceata was incorporated as Fundatia Ceata, which organized free software events in Romania and Moldova.

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