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In the Free Software Foundation's May 2013 review of single board computers, the Raspberry Pi was found to have fatal flaws for use in a free (libre) software environment:

The Raspberry Pi requires nonfree software to start up. It can't reach the point of executing free software unless this nonfree program is part of the installed system software. ... This nonfree startup program affects both models of the Raspberry Pi.

The Raspberry Pi Zero was also not usable without proprietary (nonfree) software.

Is the new Raspberry Pi 3 usable without the need for any proprietary (nonfree) software?

Community
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2 Answers2

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NO.

The RPi3 is still based on the VC4, which requires the loading of the closed-source BLOB before the Linux kernel is ran.

But is this really any different from a low-level closed source BIOS that many of the other SBC use?

Jim Green
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Since it's still using the VideoCore IV, but with a higher frequency - 400 MHz instead of 250 MHz - it suffers the same problems regarding free/libre software that uses MPEG-2 and VC-1, just as Havnar says.

There's effort in coding free/libre drivers for the GPU which doesn't make use of these two licensed codecs.

Take a look at the Linux Kernel 4.4, which has added some more support for the VideoCore IV GPU, but also lacks the two aforementioned codecs in hardware, as you need the keys for that.

EDIT: still no 3D-acceleration in hardware.
SOURCE: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=linux-44-features&num=1

EDIT2: Kernel 4.5 is out and according to this articel http://www.heise.de/open/meldung/Linux-4-5-freigegeben-3D-Performance-fuer-AMD-Raspi-Treiber-und-UEFI-Schutz-3132918.html [ger], the last third is now fully open, too. 3D-Support was added.
Redditpost for RC2 (a month old) https://www.reddit.com/r/raspberry_pi/comments/44frge/review_of_kernel_45rc2_on_raspberry_pi_2_my/

alsternerd
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