Talos II and Talos II Lite officially FSF Respects Your Freedom products

No one disputes the Free Software Federation practices what they preach, and no one disputes that their standards are strict. So hats off to Raptor, who today officially received FSF Respects Your Freedom designations for both the Talos II and T2 Lite (here's the official announcement).

The designation recognizes that the T2 and T2 family have full system schematics and source code available for the entire firmware stack from the BMC up, and no keys are needed to update or replace any firmware component unless you require your own. (The same applies to the Blackbird, too, of course; presumably its own FSF RYF certification is soon to follow.) Naturally the designation presupposes you are using a free distribution, as the FSF defines it.

The T2 family joins a relatively small number of complete systems that have RYF endorsements and given those systems' loadouts is easily the most powerful, at least of this writing. Not only is this a nice win for Raptor, who have made libre computing a cornerstone of their company, but it's also a great validation for OpenPOWER. A designation like this from the FSF, who stakes their entire reputation on libre computing, is no small matter no matter how you slice it. Congratulations!