Slashdot Mirror
A Site that Lists Systems w/o DRM?
timdaly asks: "I'm about to purchase new hardware. I understand that DRM has been added to the BIOS of some systems. Is anyone aware of a site that lists which systems are DRM-disabled? I don't want to purchase hardware that has any DRM. Like unique keys on CPUs the DRM technology seems to be more of a threat than a useful tool."
If there are any non-DRM BIOSes out there it's just because they haven't been updated yet. Don't buy them now, or you'll have no choice but to buy them for your next computer. AMI is gone, Phoenix is gone and Award no longer exists except as a sub-brand of Phoenix. Yes, this is a scary phenomenon. Vote with dollars. Apple's OpenFirmware doesn't contain any DRM (who knows for how long), Sun also uses OpenFirmware I believe?
Interestingly enough, there's a front page article on the LinuxBios project. According to the linked article:
LinuxBIOS works on 64-bit and 32-bit CPUs. CPUs supported include the Alpha, K8, K7, PowerPC, P4, PIII, PII, Cyrix (VIA), Geode (now AMD) and SC520 (AMD). Chipsets are too numerous to list. Form factors of mainboards range from the smallest PC/104 systems to the largest K8 systems. An IBM PPC 970 port is in progress.
As for Apple, trading software lock-in for hardware lock-in is hardly a solution.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
From the LinuxBIOS article, apparently Tyan now even ships boards with LinuxBIOS on request. As it is open source, I don't see how a board that supports LinuxBIOS will ever be required to have DRM. From the LinuxBIOS article, the most interesting point I found was the impact that money had on vendor support. As soon as RFP's for millions of dollars of equipment required LinuxBIOS, the vendors supported it. If you support it, it will continue.