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Stallman Pushes For Free BIOS
An anonymous reader writes "One key area that Richard Stallman, GNU project founder, hopes to develop is an OSS-based BIOS. But his work has been hindered by PC manufacturers who haven't been receptive to the idea. Stallman told Builder AU that: 'we're looking for companies willing to cooperate with the community in this way.' On challenges facing developers today, Stallman said the worst was the proliferation of laws that explicitly ban free software for certain jobs."
I realize RMS has good intentions but I don't see any point to this. It's a BIOS. What good would making it GNU/BIOS do? More importantly, what good will it do for the motherboard companies? The current system works fine, they will need incentive to switch over to something new.
Isn't there a Linux/BIOS project underway?
Isn't Microsoft looking to create a nasty piece of BIOS (or no BIOS) which would lock down a system beyond the belief of most persons who aren't "well educated" WRT technology; i.e., the people who wouldn't have a need for tinkering with the system. I'm looking to this akin to car manufacturers wanting to sell cars with the hood welded shut?
A whole new realm of pointless IANAL squabbles: "Plugging that PCI card in violates the GPL because it's option ROM creates a derived work with GNU BIOS!!"
Meanwhile it wont' matter because the good stuff will all run inside of the trusted computing base.
My foggy memory got recalled. I bought some new, defogged memory and haven't had a problem since! HTH!
Stallman is going to have to find a serious financial hook to lure companies with.
Hardware vs. Software is starting to be viewed as the last outpost of the fight to save capitalism in the Software industry.
If he's really serious, he'll find an investor who can't quite break in yet and try to nail down that niche.
I think he will prefer a GNU-BIOS project instead of the LinuxBIOS project.
Despite some ideological points, I like RMS and what he's doing.
What an OSS BIOS project need is a benevolent dictator who knows how to program, not visionary men.
"Plugging that PCI card in violates the GPL because it is (sic) option ROM creates a derived work with GNU BIOS!!"
Me is troll. Me am speaky English good.
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
hardware and GPL software don't mix; its why the zaurus largely failed and why many people prefer NetBSD's BSD license over linux's GPL.
And what on earth is the problem with existing BIOS's? I've never, ever had any problems, I've never even had to update any of them... and I've been building machines for almost ten years now.
But, the interview is interesting.
But wouldn't it be best for Stallman to lend a hand in finishing the GNU OS, instead of trying to shave a few seconds off of the time it takes to boot the damn thing up?
The GPL license is actually much more popular than BSD, and I hope you realize "NetBSD" is a "fringe" operating system compared with GNU/Linux?
OpenBIOS is what you want, and unlike LinuxBIOS, it's implementing an Open Standard too, as used by IBM, Apple and Sun : IEEE 1275-1994 or Open Firmware.
Stick Men
1. Publish your mainboard BIOS as Open Source
2. Wait for people to compile their own BIOS
3. Charge customers for flashing a working BIOS back on the ROMs.
Easy, isn't it?
In practice, even Mr. Stallman can recognize when a more permissive license, such as 3-clause BSD, LGPL, or GPL with exceptions, will further freedom more than a standard copyleft license. For instance, he blessed the Ogg project's switch to a 3-clause BSD license.
Or at least a GNU/LinuxBIOS.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
And what on earth is the problem with existing BIOS's?
Their makers are involved in Treacherous Computing Group, whose specification relies on keeping information secret from the owner of a piece of computer hardware in order to be able to sell you a computer capable of doing less.
Your use of the word 'sic' is incorrect. That notation is used to indicate an exact reproduction of the original text.
From the article (BTW, this is the *only* mention of BIOS in the arcticle):
"However, I think that development of a free BIOS is particularly important. The main obstacle is that computer manufacturers have not released all the information necessary to do the work. We are looking for companies willing to cooperate with the community in this way."
All that he's saying is that the hardware manufacturers make the information freely available. All that he wants is that people who own computers know what's going on inside a BIOS, just like every geek wants to know what's happening inside the kernel s/he's using. There's nothing wrong in expecting that! He's *not* asking hardware manufacturers to give away the BIOS for free!
What laws are proliferating that "explicitly ban free software for certain jobs"?
John Kerry is a Joke!
From openbios.org:
It appears OpenBIOS is running only in emulators. In this case, you want LinuxBIOS instead of OpenBIOS for the same reason you want Linux instead of HURD: it's here now.
Thank you for correcting me. I'll be more precise in the future.
(You aren't an idiot if you make mistakes in your writing. You're an idiot if you make mistakes in your writing, you get corrected, and you knowingly keep making the same mistakes.)
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
grow a wit.
Perhaps Stallman is just 1. frustrated about the HURD developers having to work around bugs in proprietary BIOS software and 2. afraid of treacherous computing.
I congratulate you! That's the best business model I've ever seen! Should make billions... I'd patent it if I were you.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
RMS's thinkpad t22 with linuxbios installed.
-greg
What with all the talk of embedding DRM into the BIOS itself, I'm not surprized Stallman has come out with the idea of a GPL based BIOS. What happens when every single part of the computer must be a pice of 'trusted' software, i.e. restricted software. If this project goes ahead, maybe we'll all have an alternative to what an industry too scared of litigation forces on us.
Some might consider the FSF and Stallman in paticular, to be too zealous in their pursuit of a totally open system, but given the upsurge in patenting, litigation, copyrght restrictions and DMCA style laws, the computing world is becoming a much harsher place for those who want to do, what they want to do, with their own computers. At the moment we have only operating systems restricting our rights on our own PCs. What happens if the PCs themselves contain the restrictions? How far will these restrictions go? How long before PCs come with restrictive EULA and can be repossessed for (suspected) infrigement? Already we can't mod chip our PS2s. What about our PCs? When they get region locking, will we be allowed to mod them? At least a libre BIOS might affors us some protection.
I just wonder, if trusted computing comes into vouge, will a non DRM BIOS be considered a device for circumventing copyright, and get banned under the DMCA. All the more reason to get it established soon, before newer more ridiculous laws are passed.
May the Maths Be with you!
but the project seems to have stalled. They've got a website at www.linuxbios.org, but their supported motherboards list is small and hasn't grown much for a while. Stallman's imput may get things moving again in this area. I, for one, am tired of having motherboards with terminal bugs in the Bios which the motherboard manufactuors can't be bothered fixing. 3rd party hacked Bioses like Jan's efforts only go so far.
It is IMO (it's sort of a 'zen' feeling) necessary for someone to seriously advocate freedom for every idea, even if there is no chance of it happening in the forseeable future. Also, the next logical step from free software is free firmware.
Richard Stallman does actually know how to program. Although some may argue against it, it took programming knowledge to help write GNU Emacs ;-) (As well as working on gcc and gdb if Emacs doesn't hold enough credibility for you).
All you PC kiddies, who havnt used say, a sun box, dont know what you are missing.
Whilst you may think that a bios is only usefull for tweeking memory timings to get a few more FPS from games, there are loads more things that it can do. For example on a sparc you can do memory, network and scsi tests at a low level before any OS gets to mess with the hardware. You can even program in forth at the OK prompt.
The ability to boot off the network is now in place on most modern bioses, but that has come about as a direct result of having it on server class bioses for years.
The fact that there is a full on TTY driver in the sun bios, means that you can plug the serial out into a another box and have full access to all aspects of the bios remotely. This may not seem much of a big deal to home users, but to a sysadmin it could save you hours of travel. Then there is the fact that you can change bios params. from within the OS.
Modern bioses by just havnt kept pace with modern hardware. There is a monopoly by a few companies, all pushing out a similar product that has just the minimum functions to run the box.
Whilst people may or may not love Stallman due to his abrasive nature youve got to admit that without him, there would be no linux, no GNU and a lot of us would be out of a job.
So, when M$ mandates that all mother board manufacturers uses a bios like that on the Xbox, or their OS wont run on the box, who will they listen to ?? A load of linux "loonies" of a multi billion dollar corp ??
Yes we have hacked Xbox to run linux, but its been patched and the linux hacks are getting harder and harder.
Now under DMCA if you bypass a copy protection you are almost a terrorist. How many of our employers are going to run linux, if its illegal to bypass the bios to install it?
Is this a problem outside of the x86 world? Could a PowerPC 970 based system, for instance, be more easily equipped with an open bios? What about a modern iMac?
The PCI card's option ROM and the Free BIOS are merely aggregated at run time. Aggregation does not constitute a derived work under the GPL. IAALS, which is more than you can claim; I'll bet?
I very much doubt whether Richard Stallman hopes to develop an
OSS-based BIOS. He'll be wanting a Free Software BIOS. They are
not the same thing.
There is a site where open-sourced bios(es) are being developed.
It's called linuxbios.com
Thx !
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
The best way to make money from Free Software is to sell hardware and services. In what business are the OEM's? They sell commodity hardware and services to augment the shipping of bundled software. The software is their largest cost over and above the razor-thin margin on parts. Lower the cost of any software component and the profit margin increases.
One would think then that they'd jump at the chance to unyoke themselves from Pheonix or Award Incs? Especially since this lowers their marginal cost across the board on every PC sold? Convincing them of this will have to wait until Microtel-insourced and IBM-outsourced are eating the other lunches on the low-end and the high-end through cost reduction employing FLOSS products.
BIOS is dying. 64-bit systems don't have it anymore or won't have it for long if they do.
Seems as if a free BIOS existed, it could be tweaked to take advantage of all the hardware in a way that's not possible right now, the CD player could be accessed without an OS (other than the BIOS itself) for example. might be a pretty big BIOS though.
I guess you are not running Windows, right? :)
Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all
I don't really understand why RMS wanting something to be "free" and open is news. RMS wants the doors to the building he works in to be free and open (literally, it was posted /. but I am not going to take the time to look it up.) If RMS was a creationist he would argue with God that creation should be open and free (anyone should be able to create the universe but if you do use his model you have to release the source code).
Note I personally prefer the modified BSD license and think GNU is trying to mandate "morality".
Bad Panda! No Bamboo for you! In matters of importance ACs will not be responded to. Want to say something critical,OK
Roswell! Roswell! 1984!
Well, there are lots of reasons.
Being able to guarantee a standard, open booting protocol for the OS of your choice is a good place to start.
Being able to guarantee that you'll still have an upgrade path when your motherboard is no longer deemed worthy of direct maintenance by the manufacturer is also pretty good.
Having a common, open standard for hardware interfaces like bootable devices is pretty nice too.
And, of course, there's Freedom.
But if tcpa allows those wal-mart "computing devices" to provide their users some basic functionality without ddosing the entire subnet with virus activity, then I'm all for it... as will be most of the joes and janes presently calling tech support every month because their computer caught (yet another) case of the clap.
Something has to be done about security, and linux (such as it is) is no panacea. That means disabling a certain level of geekiness is required simply because most of those home users don't have a fucking clue how a computer works - nor should they - any more than you should have to know how to rebuild a compressor just so you can enjoy the "priviledge" of preserving your food with a refrigerator.
If "trusted computing" helps prevent grandma from being owned every time she hops on pogo, it has a great deal of value to very many people. Sorry, but that's life.
And rather than pushing all these manufacturers to do what he wants, people like RMS should be out there rounding up talent to help create our own platform. I was designing CPUs from TTL logic when I was in goddamn high school - it ain't that hard if you know what you are doing. And with all the OSS tools available today it should not be that difficult to evolve a truly open cpu and chipset. Yes the open version would be years behind and yeah, it'll be more expensive (at first) than those commodity parts. Such is the nature of supply and economies of scale. But if it's a truly competetive product then others will adopt it, and that will allow the "scale" to tip somewhat back in favor of the open approach. AMD and Intel don't have the only fab lines on the planet, you know - and IBM and Sun would probably love some new tech to help keep those fab lines busy. Hell, make the design simple enough and the parts could be built on the obsolete assembly lines cast off by intel and amd.
I'm not saying we should just shut up and lie back, nor am I saying we have no right to speak out about the evolution of technology - but at a certain level trying to tell manufacturers like intel what to make oversteps the bounds of logic, if not freedom itself.
It's gonna have to happen: either we do it our way and let them do it theirs and let the market decide, or they are going to leap ahead and then will have the power of "proof." Once that happens it won't be a matter of deciding for ourselves because, if TCPA is at all effective in reducing the number of compromised commodity computing systems, the lobbyists will waste no time making sure the braindead old farts in washington legislate away all other options.
The time is now
This is all very disturbing. If I can't avoid all that '1984' stuff, I won't touch the thing. They won't get a penny from me, for there is another, hidden, cost I am not willing to pay.
/. , or a public place with cameras.
Especially that part about not beeing able to determine what is computer exactly doing is very serious nono. Until now, we could have had considered the free software idea, in part about the right to examine the code and understand what it is doing, redundant, because binary code could have been disassembled and understood. We always could check on software and reveal if it was i.e. spyware and vendors counted on our ability to do so and in most cases behaved themself. Now the lights go out and we are at their mercy.
The PC will not be regarded as trusted by anyone, it will be regarded as some lurking strangers' eyes and ears, like the telephone, e-mail, this here
We don't really NEED "content", it is not something we DIE without. The intention of the politicians is not to protect "content industry", they are neither that important, nor bringing that much money in budget ( nor bribing them as much as percieved ), no, the industry is just an excuse. The main goal is more CONTROL, more POWER, more Kafkian FEAR and RESPECT for "Authorities". "The Big Brother is Watching You".
It is sad fact that Microsoft is in it not because of the greed, but because of some morbid juvenile obsession with "agencies", "secrecy", "importance", "(the world) under my thumb" and such BS. That is so apparent, even without any memo leaks. In short, they wish to become a paragovernment, a sort of (uber-)legal l337 4ax0r cracker/lamer organisation. What they fail to see is that no technical infrastructure is tamperproof (bluebox, anyone) and soon enaugh all that will turn into mob ruled cyberpunk hell. Scary, huh?
Since a working computer consists of hardware and software, surely you cannot have truly free software without free hardware to run it on. We have been lucky in that IBM accidently gave us almost free hardware in the IBM PC, but that may also have made us complacent. Perhaps we need to work as hard to develop really free hardware. I suggest the FSF should rename itself the Free Computing Foundation.
This story alone may be sufficient to convince some of you of the need for openness in BIOSes:
A while back I bought a VIA EPIA-M system to function as a firewall at home. Nice and quiet, low power consumption, onboard LAN and one extra PCI slot. Nice, I thought, I can install a second NIC and use it as a firewall effectively.
Only problem is: when inserting a second NIC the throughput for both drops to the 100kbit/s range! A known issue with VIA for more than a year now, but they still haven't released a new BIOS. For about half a year I ran with just the onboard LAN and used IP aliasing to get the job done, but that resulted in a less reliable firewall.
I finally went ahead after some encouraging reports and flashed an unreleased beta BIOS that can be found somewhere on the VIA site if you look really hard (or happen to stumble across it). This totally solved the problem. That was late last year.
My point? An open BIOS would have been fixed and released so much faster (not that I could have done so myself as I'm not a programmer) than VIA's "efforts" have been so far.
See here for VIA's last BIOS release; the problem has been known for longer than that.
--
While probably not conforming to Stallman's definition of open-source, Open Firmware is at least non-proprietary, and is used by Sun and Apple on their computers. Maybe Palladium et al will trigger a move by the techno-elite to Apple and Sun hardware?
How about some of that good ol fashioned programming talent backed up by some hardware design talent. Start a group for hardware design. Just like Apple does, the free softwares and community could "own" it's hardware. Make it run only software thats GPL and the like and protect it under the DMCA so that it cannot be circumvented legally to run proprietary code. I for one love to improve circuit board design, yet not that much a pro on the original design. I work for weeks perfecting circuit paths. Anything unrealistic about it?
What about software patents that make it impossible to know whether or not your program infringes some stupid patent?
What about the DMCA which exposes the programmer to possible jail time for writing code?
Next to these, laws the explicitly ban free software for certain jobs seem positively benign.
Follow the adventures of the new wandering jews
AMD has seen the light and has become the most forthcoming of all chipset vendors, so Athlon and Opteron motherboards tend to be very well supported. (VIA, by contrast, is still a problem). Tyan has a full-time LinuxBIOS engineer, and several system vendors, among Linuxnetworx, ship machines with LinuxBIOS installed.
They have solved the VGA init problem by importing an 8086 emulator that (strangely) runs faster than the hardware version in P4 and Athlon. For x86 they have a funny compiler called romcc that uses registers as main memory, for use before the memory controller has been initialized. (Opteron doesn't need it because ~450 bytes of the cache works as RAM immediately after power-up.) What the project needs most now is some institutional support, so they can run regression tests on all the hardware they support.
The project is far from dead: they are fixing to release major version 2. When will it be ready? Sooner if you help.
Great!
I'm working mostly against software patents in the EU, but Trusted Computing is going to be a BIG problem. If you know what to do, maybe I could help, or I could encourage others to help.
What are you doing to stop it becoming required by law?
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
From the Article:
You clearly point out in many interviews and articles you write that you don't associate free software with the open source movement. Why is that?
Why do Interviewers keep asking him the same stupid questions over and over? Those questions are answered by every other interview hes ever done and his speeches. (he has a new one up, btw.)
I wish that sometimes they would target the interviews for people already familiar with Free Software. Most slashdotters know the relationship between GNU and linux, but what about the relationship between GNU and the BSDs. Something like that would be interesting to read about.
Maybe its time for slashdot to have another Ask Stallman. Alot has changed since the last one.
That's good to know. So if Microsoft and Intel succeed in turning the x86 line into useless, locked-down, glorified-X-Boxes, I can always migrate to a Mac or something. Sun's MAJC processor line sounds cool, and I've heard that wonderful non-x86 things might be coming out of Transmeta's labs in the near future. So I guess personal computing has a bright future in spite of what the TCPA has planned.
Software patents? -There are >100,000 software idea patents filed in the USA, if Australia has to broaden the scope of it's patent laws to the scope of the USA's laws, that's 100,000 jobs that free software can't do.
The digital broadcast flag is another - as mentioned in the article. Anything with a screen larger than 13 inches would be classed as a TV, and only software which can't be fixed/improved will be allowed to read digital TV signals.
About the DVD example: it's not just DVDs, under the DMCA/EUCD it's illegal to circumvent encryption to access copyrighted work. Today this prevents free software hackers from writing DVD players, but what if Microsofts next version of MS Word uses an encrypted file format with some of the default+necessary parts of the file format copyrighted? yup, wrap anything in encryption, and free software can't legally access it.
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
In my work I use PCs as lab equipment running real-time linux (RTAI and RTNET) which generally works great. However, a major part of the pain we typically experience is getting interrupts set up in a way that works without conflicts on the absolutely BIOS-brain-damaged DELL workstations that we typically have access to. The DELL machines are generally fine but the BIOS on them lets you control almost nothing about how interrupts are set. The contrast between this and, for example, an old ABIT board I used to build a machine for myself, is just silly. While it is true that most business types don't need all that functionality, it makes a huge difference for those that do. We'd even be willing to pay some significant amount of $$ for an alternative BIOS that gave us access to all the gory details just to avoid wasting time playing russian roulette with card swapping, etc. We even have some machines that don't deterministically recognize some framegrabbers on each boot. This requires us to boot over and over again till we (eventually) luck out... OK rant over.
>Software patents?
>The digital broadcast flag is another
We are looking for laws that "explicitly ban free software for certain jobs". These restrict non-free software also.
You examples don't answer the question.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
If RMS was a creationist he would argue with God that creation should be open and free (anyone should be able to create the universe but if you do use his model you have to release the source code).
Yes, Stallman really does want an Free/open universe! What you describe is a copylefted universe, which is a little different.
This is a stallman rant about god and nixon:
I cared a lot about Watergate. In fact, I often wore a button which was inspired by Watergate, which said, "Impeach God." I compared what Nixon was telling us with the spiel that, according to Christianity, God gives us, and they match up point by point. "I have a secret plan to end the War in Vietnam, or end injustice and suffering in the world. For heavenly security reasons, I can't let you mere mortals understand the details of my plan. So you'll just have to take it on faith that what I'm doing is right and obey me, because after all, I am entirely good. I told you so myself, and you have to believe everything I say. And besides, I see the big picture, and I am so much wiser than you. So you should just obey implicitly. And if you don't obey me, that means you're evil, so I'll put you on my Enemies List, and the IRS will audit you every year for all eternity." I figured why stop with the small fry, let's go after Mister Big. No matter how powerful a tyrant is, they all deserve to have their power taken away.
I know! I know!
If "trusted computing" helps prevent grandma from being owned every time she hops on pogo, it has a great deal of value to very many people. Sorry, but that's life.
The problem is that MS trusts the shell: protocol handler, but does not trust Free Software.
IE will be automatically certified. Mozilla will have to jump through hoops.
"Trusted" does not mean "secure". It means "written by us".
The trend is to pack more functionality into the firmware on computers. More isn't always better as bios based features can limit end user functionality. This is why DRM is such a sticky issue - it's an example of using firmware to limit capability. An open BIOS would be a great place to ensure that a computer has maximum potential for the user... without the limitations that come as you pack functionality into the BIOS.
-- $G
will a non DRM BIOS be considered a device for circumventing copyright, and get banned under the DMCA. All the more reason to get it established soon, before newer more ridiculous laws are passed.
Unlawful use of 1's and 0's! Five years & $5000 fine!
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. --Edmund Burke
Now if the interfaces involve encryption, and keys are not available to free software, then certainly a lot of people, not just RMS, would complain. But it seems unlikely that this will happen, since the large chip companies make money from Linux-on-x86 sales.
You seem really keen on this, but it is false. The only way RMS contradicts capitalism is that he refuses to admit the crude monetisation of so-called 'intellectual property'. RMS instead says: ideas are not property. And our existing copyright and patent laws in fact state this. OK, at this point I have no idea what you are talking about. Free software is not going to destroy the computing industry, although it might cause some unemployment (just like other disruptive market changes). Surely "people who are smart enough and motivated enough" can cope with that.Back in t'old days, real men programmed machines with no such weenie luxuries. No No. The ROM only knew how to say "Hello I'm not dead" and gimme a disk with a boot block. Please no replies with "front panel switches" :-)
Why have a BIOS in ROM at all? The ROM ought to load the "BIOS" off hidden sectors on whatever the boot media is. Even AMESS understands this (thanks to it's CP/M roots).
Foo. Put *machine* diagnostics in the ROM, not old
INT 10, INT13 crap. That way even those of us who ought to know better can hose ourselvess overclocking and doing other things without losing
everything.
Shame that RMS won't come clean and admit he couldn't write an OS... There is no pressing need for a freeware BIOS a la Phoenix's clone of the IBM bios because anyone doing embedded stuff is going to go for a FreeBSD or Linux solution anyway and aside from a very brief interlude with INT 13
(a couple o' seconds) ...
Dumb and Dumberer
Who looks more stupid, the guy missing out a few words or a guy trying to be clever about it and being wrong. Also the guys trying to be funny, not trolling.
You're with stupid.
I've actually thought the same thing many times (though from an 'Open Source' rather than a 'Free Sotware' viewpoint); what's the point of having a completely open-source OS and drivers if you don't have an open BIOS? From a security standpoint, it's similar to Apple's OSX -- the kernel may be open to review, but if Aqua is completely closed, there is no way you can verify that there are no backdoors in it. You can only be certain if you have 100% access to all the code running on your system and can check it yourself, and even then, it's still a bit risky (I know I'm paranoid, I'm an OpenBSD guy at heart). While it is highly unlikely, if your BIOS is closed the possibility of backdoors still exists, and will become more probable in the future as MS/Pheonix get together on their new DRM-BIOS (search old Slashdot articles to find it).
In short: Anyone in the post 9-11 world who trusts the government or big business to look out for the rights or privacy of the individual needs to stop watching the Fox Propaganda Network and see what's happening that Rupert Murdoch DOESN'T want you to know about.
I'm not normally an irrational zealous dickhead, but I figure "When in Rome..."
With all due respect you seem to be stuck on the free as in beer. There is far more to open source that that. I particularly like that, using your analogy, this "soup kitchen" not only gives away soup, but provides the recipe so I can improve it. Or take their soup and use it in a burger recipe. And I can charge for delivery if I like!
It would kinda suck if the soup kitchens of the world put out the restaurants... I rather like eating out.
Hey buddy, you're quite free to walk into a soup kitchen RIGHT NOW and eat. Why don't you? Likely because the restaurant makes much better food, has much better ambience, much better service and also serves wine with the meal (They even have better soup!).
The problem with your analogy is that right now, the soup kitchens are making the better food, PLUS wine and a cab ride home. FOR FREE. If the soup kitchen can continue to make better food, and provide better service, good riddance to the restaurant.
But some of the restaurants are learning : Look at Novell, IBM, HP... they've got the idea : they've put soup kitchens IN their restaurants. They give the soup, and sell you tasty bread to go with it. They let you walk to the buffet for free, or you can pay to have a waiter!
If you, or your restaurant can't accept and adapt to that, well... looks like you and your wife won't be eating out much longer.
Don't be such a soup nazi! :P
Talk about clueless! How about this? We require everyone to license their telephone - because, after all, I just pick it up and press a few buttons and I can pester anyone in the world! I can talk dirty to them, corrupt youth, organize violent antigovernent actions...
The only differnce between the computer and the telephone to most of the population is the computer blows the fuck up every few months when it is used in a manner expected by any reasonable person. The telephone is simply too "dumb" to be subject to the same infections (or they were until the advent of "smart cellphones").
The car analogy is not only banal but also hideously misplaced. We generally do not have people running around erecting their own misleading road signs and actively disabling the brakes on people's cars.
Most people now don't give a fuck about "creating media" any more than most people cared about operating their own radio transmitter in 1920. They just want to be able to trade personal pictures and porn with their friends, swap music, send notes around... and they should not have to endure the nonsense that is become "the internet" in order to do so. Why this notion seems such a threat to so many like you is completely beyond me; I don't give a fuck about AOL either so I simply don't pay for the service. That it exists is no more a threat to my liberty than the clouds in the sky.
Just like "trusted computing."
Which is precisely why I am glad That G-d is in charge of creation and not RMS
The Fat loser..... I have no idea how Stallman makes his calculations, but over the years he's shown that he *hates* anything that makes money especially in software. What about the rest of us that depend on software jobs that get paid Mr. Fukman? I guess he's mad that McDonalds is not free.
Here's some feed back for the fat bastard: Fuck Off and Die.
Noone gives a $hit about you or your ideas (besides some.....but then there's plenty of people in the world who have $hit for brains).
Go back to your cave and your plan to undermine capitalism and the fruits of hard working people.....You'll be Smeagol the *fat version*, obesesses with something so wrong..that will eventually bring you to your demise......
> JessLeah whispered as an aside:
"You aren't an idiot if you make mistakes in your writing. You're an idiot if you make mistakes in your writing, you get corrected, and you knowingly keep making the same mistakes."
JessLeah,
While looking back at your posts, I see that you have been corrected often enough for your pedantry. Yet, you keep at it. And it appears you have no flair for it at all.
Open source is not a panacea for everything. By letting people see the code for the BIOS opens up a world of more incompatiblity. Its bad enough trying to get Linux to work on current hardware. Now we'll need to worry about a certain kernel of Linux working with a certain distro of BIOS?? No thanks! There already are too many cooks in the kitchen as it is.
anyone should be able to create the universe but if you do use his model you have to release the source code
how can he suggest DNA be open source - by rights it's IP owned by the pharmaceutical companies isn't it?
It's fun to violate the D M C A!!.....
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
A few points:
1) I've read the article twice. Not one mention of BIOS in there. How does this relate?
2) Why is the variety of licenses available to me as a developer (GPL, BSD, Penalty-of-Death) a bad thing? We whine a lot about the freedom of the end-user, but forget the developer has lots of freedoms, too, including the freedom to ask for something in return. The fact that not everbody chooses the GPL is not a bad thing. The fact that some do is a very good thing.
3) Since 1984, the big excuse for the vapo-HURD was "Oh, we switched to Mach. That'll take a long time." Now we learn that they switched to L4. See you in another 20 years!
4) Let's have a contest: Find an interview with Stallman in which he neither a) whines or b) makes excuses for the 20-year abscense of the HURD. Post your links here.
No, the IP in the DNA in *your* body is *your* IP. After all, your body is the one thing you own when you come into the world.
If you get a woman pregnant, you can actually order her to get an abortion on the grounds that the baby's DNA infringes your intellectual property rights.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but a BIOS is nearly negligible as far as making money. It comes on hardware which is sold for a price. So I don't quite see why PC manufacturers would be so put off by the idea.... Except that some hairy communist is trying to cram it down their throats.
But weren't there people trying to DRM the world through the BIOS? "Trusted Computing" and all that? The only way it can be trusted is if the source can be independently audited. Seeing companies scrambling to protect themselves from their customers only gives credence to the notion that corporate power is really getting out of hand.
But of course Stallman, like an idiot, still insists that people adapt to HIS vocabulary. He begins the interview with paragraphs of definitions. It's his lone insistence on cumbersome terminology that makes me completely fed up with listening to him--and I'm usually on his side! How sad is that? Imagine how a proprietary mind would react!
The biggest obstacle for the acceptance of Free Software is still Richard Stallman. For Pete's sake, man, ATTEMPT to understand *other people*.
When you are unable to boot ( and potentially run ) anyting other then what is 'authorized', you will care..
This is the true problem that is being discussed.
Even if you are able to bypass the bios after boot, its still needed for that initial load.
Now what good is it for the MB companies? Its not.. they would rather conform to 'DRM standards' so they dont get sued later for 'aiding' pirates..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Oh yes, because Open Source is so awful at standards compliance, and proprietary software is always better. That's why Linux can handle ancient POSIX code while Windows barfs on stuff made five years ago.
Wait a minute...
Nothing would make me happier than to see more countries do like what was done by Hugh Grant's character as Prime Minister of England in 'Love Actually' when he stood up for his country in the face of America. I am all for national sovereingty and minimizing gloablization efforts because they stifle individual countries and end up hindering everyone in some way. Now some people might not like it but if each country's politicians look out for the good of their countries instead of bringing them into these stupid trade groups and treaty organizations I think the world might just be better off.
Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree. -Martin Luther
Germany only looking out for Germany has been shown not to be such a good idea in the past, you know.
I'd like to see a BIOS for the PC without alot of the old cruft that was used back in the days of DOS. All you NEED now in a bios is powerup diags, configure the chipsets/memory and then search for a mass storage device that has an OS. Of course, a bios can have more fluf than that, but niche uses aside, when has anyone called int14? (the BIOS's serial port functions)
How about booting off of those USB key things.. or keep your OS image on your digital camer's flash rom, and booting of off that.....
which has been adopted by both SUN and Apple.
This system allows for the modification and
extension of the BIOS. It is based upon the
FORTH programming language, which is both
compact (minimum of 32 keywords as a core), as
well as highly extensible.
Need to add discovery of new hardware, and the
loading of the appropriate drivers?
Need to add a new BOOT device to the startup?
Working on an embedded system that requires
adaptible startup processes?
OpenBOOT is an IEEE standard, albeit it hasn't
has such an active development core in the
past couple of years. If you want to see the
power and flexibility of this strategy, look
at the console BOOT prompt on any SUN or newer
Apple computer.
Oh wait, that's not GPL. Not free enough for RMS, I guess.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
One of the key things I would like to see is a common BIOS that has the features of many of the popular BIOSes these days. Things like automatic hardware detection and boot-time security would benefit from this. One thing that has been bothering me is full ACPI support in the BIOS. As a laptop user, this is important, because ACPI support is one of the keys to system-level power management. If hardware detection was BIOS based, then 1. drivers wouldn't be all that important, and 2. waking up from hibernation wouldn't require more effort (at least, in Linux). Needless to say, I haven't had the time to get it working yet. In short, it wouldn't do anything for the motherboard companies. Many mobo manufacturers have their own BIOSes, with optimizations/specifics to the boards they make. Perhaps GNU/BIOS could provide a common starting point on which specific features on boards could be then added.
If someone would show Motherboard manufacturers how a GNU BIOS will save them money, provide an edge over the competition and allow them to keep their proprietary technology private I am sure the companies will be receptive.
Just telling someone to switch to something because it should be free is ignorant. This is not how businesses work. I own an OSS company that specializes in security and related products and services.
computer. Not a computer that can run Linux, but one that is built specifically to run Linux. Ideally, this computer would not run win32 out of the box.
Call it the Open Station, or some other thing.
The way I see it, corporations are rapidly gaining more rights than we, as individuals, are. In order to realistically put our hat in the ring, we need a corporation that works to do our bidding. Better to start building one now than later.
There is another side benefit here as well in that some of the benefit Apple brings to the table could also happen in Linux land. Control over the hardware, or at the least, solid known minimum specifications would allow developers to target the known environment, making support and the user experience more cohesive than it is now.
Expensive to start? Sure, but necessary IMHO.
Personally, I would support this effort. Say a nice machine hits the $300 - $600 mark w/o monitor. That price point would put it in reach of a lot of folks.
We can make our voice heard in a more powerful way while bringing some credence to the whole OSS movement in a new way.
I know Linux and the BSDs run on almost anything. That's a good thing; however, I believe if people see Linux computers as a choice, their perception of Linux might change for the better. The whole thing would become a little less leach like. (I don't believe this, but I have heard others lean this way from time to time.)
Something to think about anyway...
Blogging because I can...
Commercial BIOS is slow, cumbersome, and simply a pain to fix and feature. Things like PXE, console redirect, etc. are far more expensive then they should be because the commercial providers see these features as 'high end server features', and thus overcharge for them.
The BIOS in PCs isn't just some piece of firmware, it acts as a device driver for the motherboard. It provides APIs that allow the OS to interface to various parts of the motherboard, like the power supply. Therefore, each motherboard has its own BIOS that is tailored to the unique combination of devices that are on that motherboard.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
One vendor out there should have a board (or series of boards) that can be re-programed with an OpenBIOS that can boot up and run FreeBSD.
So just PUBLISH the name of the damn board(s) and let the supports go buy it. Include a XML thank you letter so the geeks who care can print out annd mail the letter to the manufactor to let them know that they bought the board BECAUSE of the vendor's support.
Whining about 'we can't get every vendor on board' - screw that. Ya just need onne.
Maybe if RMS took a shower the companies with which he meets would be more receptive to his desires. If he came into my office, I most certainly would not entertain any ideas given to me by some smelly hippie.
I'll probably get modded flamebait, but I do have a point here, which is that RMS should consider changing his appearance (and smell) if he wants to be taken seriously by the mainstream.
I'm sure there are some catches to the rosy scenerio above. I can imagine chipset makers bowing to M$ giving you trouble and that could ruin your business. The NDA rot is deep rooted and must be attacked where it gets it's most money, the desktop. They propose the following scenario to mobo makers:
Smaller mobo makers are going to be eliminated if the NDA people have their way. It's always easier to control a smaller number of rich slaves than a large number of hungry ones.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Which is precisely why I am glad That G-d is in charge of creation and not RMS.
One can believe that various deities are in charge of various aspects of creation, and we puny humans shouldn't disturb them. Or one can seek to understand the underlying mechanisms of the universe with an eye towards eventually mastering them. Humans have tended to the latter path, and today, we no longer think of lightning as various bolts tossed around by Thor, but as a logical consequence of certain electromagnetic laws.
It is our understanding of electromagnetism, inter alia, that has enabled us to build personal computers. It is the free exchange of information in scientific journals that us has enabled this understanding. While scientific journals have, of late, begun to enforce heavy handed copyright rules, the authors of journal articles freely build upon the works of others with the expectation that their works will, in turn be cited by authors building upon them.
It should be fairly obvious that this "open" spirit of enquiry has provided more material benefits than the "closed" development model advocated by various priest hoods.
But if tcpa allows those wal-mart "computing devices" to provide their users some basic functionality without ddosing the entire subnet with virus activity, then I'm all for it... as will be most of the joes and janes presently calling tech support every month because their computer caught (yet another) case of the clap.
Why not just give them free software instead? KDE 3 is just as easy to use as XP is but the underlying system takes care of your virus problems. It's what I recommend to my clients. M$ is over unless they thwart the world with BIOS lock outs and bad laws.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Funny how publishing specs and simply not suing everone in the world is so difficult to do.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Actually, this could become VERY important as the industry pushes for greater security lockdown of the machine. (E.g.: DRM throughout the entire stack.)
Full-blown DRM would necessarily involve the BIOS. Sure, GNU/Linux can remain free of DRM, but what good is that if the BIOS refuses to boot it for "security" reasons?
We really need an open-source BIOS, and we need it now before it's too late.
I was just looking at some of the source code. Those guys are coding like it's 1985. Pages of code to re-implement "stl::vector" for each type.
And it's four years old.= 7170
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid
"LinuxBIOS runs on a wide range of platforms. Fifty supported motherboards are in the source tree, but we have found that many motherboards are so similar that a LinuxBIOS for one motherboard can work on another. Companies build code for one motherboard, run it on another motherboard and do not always get around to telling us.
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.
Chipset Secrets
One of the most common phrases we heard from chip vendors in the first few years was "we'll never tell you that." "That" being CPU information, chipset information, motherboard information or any combination of the three. The designs for these three systems constitute highly guarded secrets. It seems amazing, even now, that vendors are able to let us build a GPLed BIOS that by its nature exposes some of these secrets.
How was it possible for us to get this type of information? Simple, businesses are not charities. If there is no business case for releasing this information to us, they do not do it. If, however, there is a business case, then it happens--sometimes with astonishing speed.
From what we can see, the two factors in our success were competition and the creation of a market. Competition gave us a wide variety of choices as to motherboard, chipset and CPU. Once there was a reasonable market, vendors were concerned about being left out.
The experience at LANL is revealing. LANL's last two large cluster RFPs have specified LinuxBIOS as a mandatory requirement. Spending on these RFPs has come in at over $19 million US. Companies that had decided not to become involved in LinuxBIOS could not respond to these RFPs. Companies that had the foresight to get involved in LinuxBIOS early in the game were equipped to respond. Foresight, in this case, conferred a competitive advantage.
Conclusions
LinuxBIOS has come a long way in four years--as one person put it, from "I'm Possible" to "In Production". LinuxBIOS is used on everything from the largest Linux clusters yet built to the small--test instruments, MP3 players and portable clusters.
LinuxBIOS makes it possible to build systems without PC hardware baggage. The systems can be optimized for Linux and thus can be more compact and simpler. There is increasingly a business case for such systems.
LinuxBIOS is now in its second version, with four years, at least six CPUs and over 50 motherboards' worth of experience behind it. It now takes only days in some cases to do a port to a new system; originally, it took months. LinuxBIOS' impact on the world of computing is only beginning."
Or one can rightly believe that the universe was created in an orderly fashion and for a good reason, and that one of the reasons it was done so is so we could recognise its order and thus see the creator. God hasn't hidden things from us to make the universe closed as some mystic religions would claim, in fact He gave us the minds, tools and desire to discover it.
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The specifications already exist, it's compatible with Apple and Sun hardware already, and is the direction the x86 world has stated they're planning to move in (aside from the DRM stuff). Seems like the obvious solution.
It's gonna have to happen: either we do it our way and let them do it theirs and let the market decide, or they are going to leap ahead and then will have the power of "proof." Once that happens it won't be a matter of deciding for ourselves because, if TCPA is at all effective in reducing the number of compromised commodity computing systems, the lobbyists will waste no time making sure the braindead old farts in washington legislate away all other options.
You do realize that we are talking about DRM here. The thought of legislation aimed at requiring DRM on all computing devices should be abhorrent for anyone, such as yourself, who believes or professes to believe in the free market, in ideological freedom, or even in capitalism.
What you are suggesting is that the only way of competing is to develop a completely open replacement. The only trouble is that manufacturing microchips is expensive and not exactly something one can do at home.
Yes, there are open source computer chips out there. They are not very common but they exist at least in concept and in design. But what are they without a mass market?
The answer is, I think, first to support the development of such projects as LinuxBIOS (I may want to look at this when I buy my next system) and secondly to try to get manufacturers to begin moving in an open source derection with things such as computer chips, chip sets, etc.
But finally, the market *will* determine whether this works regardless of other factors, and I am not sure that it will. As the simple example, I would point out that eBooks are still extremely rare, and I see no reason why book publishers would stop printing paper books.
Similarly, despite many claims that DRM would make the CD obsolete, I am not so sure. Indeed, it may prevent the CD from becoming obsolete. I actually think that if we saw more centralized control over, say the ability to watch a DVD, I think that they would be less common than they are today. I don't think that people generally like the idea that they don't have any control over their documents, etc.
Also, you have the problem of competition. If I state that I only accept documents written in Word 2000 or earlier formats, or with Abiword, OpenOffice, etc. then I can use this as an incentive to get people to begin installing these applications side-by-side Word. Unless MS decides that they want to really hurt people by preventing access (i.e. the ability to read) to legacy content, this could backfire big time.
In many ways, I agree both with the practical benefit of open source, and with RMS on the value of freedom. But unlike RMS, I think that the "moral" value of freedom exists primarily because of the practical and tangible benefits that it provides. Freedom is the killer app of Linux, but this is due to economic and practical reasons rather than an abstract moral right.
But perhaps these two are intertwined. Moral good might be defined by, or at least measured by, the net level of social benefit that is generated by an intangible such as freedom. At least part of this benefit is economic. So I am not sure that the Free Software and Open Source movements are as different as RMS makes them out to be.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
If my bank refuses a connection for this reason, I fully intend to widthdraw every cent deposited, close the accounts, and flip them the finger. Should they delay in giving me every cent, I'll have a nice policeman show up and ask them why not?
Paypal doesn't work for me anyway. I don't use DVDs [Because I don't trust them.]
If my computer doesn't boot from lack of signage, the equipment is being shipped back as defective. If this happens multiple times, my lawyer will write them a nice letter asking them if they intend to fulfill their part of the bargin.
Once I've bought it, it's mine, and I do intend to control it my way.
Either way, there's an implicit invitation to reverse engineer, read the source code, and contribute patches.
Isn't this what EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface) is supposed to be? The specification is freely available, and there is a reference implementation released under the Common Public License (CPL). I know it is a product of Intel, but it is suppsoedly an architecture-agnostic platform.
Does anyone know why there hasn't been been more widespread adoption of EFI?
Slowly, management has come around to the fact that open source deployment is faster, if not as flashy, as far more expensive commercial applications and at least as effective. They came to that realization because when problems came up they saw with their own eyes that our open source tools had the answers and the commercial products didn't because the commercial products were not licensed to "see" the problem.
I don't quite follow. Are you saying that open source applications/suites/etc "had the answers" b/c you could modify them? Or just that there were free alternatives for these needs that, for whatever reason, weren't reasonably covered by COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf, fwiw) software?
If it's the former, I'd argue that I'd rather have a well-documented, bug-free API for customizing software (COTS, commercial custom, or even open source with API) than the mangled of code I've seen for many open source projects. Programming an application explicitly for reuse is a much better way around the issue of "anticipating unanticapatable needs" (sorry) than having source handed to you as a perfect theorhetical, but rarely practical, solution. Afaik, it's much easier to automate Microsoft Word through COM than it is to automate AbiWord through the code itself.
And is your "flashy" the same as "good, user-friendly design", which has been a (imo) level-headed complaint against many open source projects? Careful you don't code for the coders and miss the boat. Again, not trying to put words into your mouth; I couldn't quite follow there.
Most corporations have more lines of code for internal applications than MS Windows and the Linux kernel combined.
Okay, that's just outright false. "Most corporations"? Perhaps most Fortune 500 corporations (and I'd bet you're right there), but that's a bit over the top as worded, and if it were the case we'd see more custom OSes housing those customizated corporate applications.
That said, your point is well taken. Custom needs require custom software, and to have a sizable percentage of code be written in-house or contracted out as a custom solution is a common practice. Make the software fit your culture; don't, as you aptly point out, try to inefficiently fit your culture to the 0s and 1s in a COTS application...
It's only fairly recently that commercial packages for these have become available for "enterprise" use. They are expensive and can require changes to business processes that make a particular company's operation less efficient overall.
So, again, who wouldn't rather have intelligently written software with clear, as bug-free as possible hooks for corporation-specific customization rather than code of differing quality with documentation that's not quite up to snuff at times?
Your argument isn't so much an open source argument as it's an argument for designing software with customizations in mind. It's a difficult task, and starting with an oss package might be preferrable in theory than starting from scratch. But, again, whether open source or commercially closed source, what's key is good code with quality hooks/APIs with sound documentation, not simply accessible code.
If you don't believe me, ask Apple again why they used Konq and not Mozilla for Safari.
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
I disagree with the patches on the universe (I understand that my viewpoint is not one shard by the vast majority of /. readers), but if you notice my original posting I am for the modified BSD rather than GNU. Of course you can submit all the patches on creation that you want so long as they are well documented and show the bug they are patching ... :)
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My current bank describes me as an excellent customer. They will certainally miss the $500 or so (I've had up to $2,000 at some point.)
For banks, every cent counts.
Screw big media. And Paypal.
If I can do the basics, I can live with TC. I still oppose it.
To extend this wretched analogy further, one could compare the basic laws of physics to gcc (pre 2.95)-- the development of which is jealously guarded by God/RMS, and applied technology to other bits of software... It won't be long now until our programming skills are sufficient to fork gcc for our own purposes. Naturally, there have been problems with the Eisntsein/Teller/Sakharov patch...
Get GRUB or something running from the ROM. Add minimal hardware initialisation just to read a boot sector or kernel image in to memory and send it on its way.
If necessary.
-Signed, The Big Government Gestapo
They had the answers because they did the basic task well and could monitor constantly, regardless of the status of licensing. Regardless, your point on a bug-free API for customizing software would help make the COTS solutions easier to swallow. But if you don't have a license to monitor box X and box X dies....
And is your "flashy" the same as "good, user-friendly design", which has been a (imo) level-headed complaint against many open source projects? Careful you don't code for the coders and miss the boat. Again, not trying to put words into your mouth; I couldn't quite follow there.
No. "Flashy" is the "shiny things" in the brochure that make executives drool but are little practical value to the technicians. My favorite is "alert maps" with different colors for different conditions. I've put all our devices on an OpenView map and you can't make out the icons for the lines. Of course, you can "containerize" and have the colors "bubble-up" to where you have a reasonable view in front of you but then you can't tell what's borked until you spend 10 minutes "drilling down." Hey, if I could sit around on my hands and watch a blinky thingy to make sure it's green, fine. More practically, I just want a page that tells me what's broke, where it is and what the business impact is. As far as I'm concerned, a monitoring application should not have to be monitored by a human. If so, it doesn't add much value. Yes, the user interfaces on some OSS products, uhm, lack artistic quality. But since you can drop code into them to interface directly to your notification and escalation procedures it's well worth the trade off.
I agree the overall argument applies to well designed software with accessible interfaces, but the point still stands that "capitalist" companies can leverage open source in an economically effective and technically viable manner that is far, far removed from the "charity" basis Photo_Nut seems to see as the only basis for OSS existence.
What Stallman (and the rest of us) are really up against is a system of state and corporate entitlements usually just called "Pork Barrel" politics in government. The real deal is that it goes on plenty in the corporate world. Insiders are executives with budgetary signing authority and their boards, legislators and public servants with budgetary control. Outsiders are people who hold jobs and low-interest bank accounts, buy shares of mutual funds/corporate bonds and pay taxes.
The system directs all of our effort (power, like in physics class) into the system, which redistributes the effort to meet demands. The kids are watching the cookie jar. What do you think is going to happen? You tell people glass jars are better because whoever wants to can see what's inside, but that cuts off the middlemen who are snitching snacks (for each other, so they don't get caught with their own booty) and can't compete for survival based on merit alone. If the middlemen ban the glass jars should we be surprised?
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...
Note I personally prefer the modified BSD license and think GNU is trying to mandate "morality".
Welcome to the real world. If you're living in a perfect dream world then the BSD license is perfect. If you live in the real world, where 99% of the people around you couldn't care less if you were dying in the sewer while they happily profit from a circus show of your dead corpse, then GNU GPL is the only realistic approach.
It's not about mandating morality. It's about accepting the deficiencies of the real world and working to ensure perpetuation. Humans are GNU GPL. If humans were BSD we'd have been enslaved by cats millenia ago.
Maybe we have and this really is just a big circus for the amusement of our feline overlords.
+++ATHZ 99:5:80
The BIOS is just one area-- a critical feature we should all demend in consumer electronics gadgets (by voting with our dollars) is flashable firmware and documented architectures so OSS alternatives can be utilized to customize the hardwares capabilities. An inadvertent example is the Archos Jukebox MP3 player/recorders. We should see such capabilities in consumer devices as critical features that will allow us to fully utilize the hardware as we desire. Does the iPod provide for OSS firmware? No? Then buy an Archos or equivalent instead. Such a feature should be ADVERTISED as a competitive feature and appear on the spec sheets. The potential advantages are enormous-- what it represents, in effect, is Open Source hardware that can be utilized in ways unforseen to the manufacturers.
Unfortunately, many manufacturers do NOT desire such features, as it tends to counteract planned or even natural obsolescence. However, if we only buy gear that is self-extensible through open source, they can be forced to provide the feature if they are losing out to competitors who aren't afraid to offer it.
Motherboards designed for easily replacable bios code could be re-used as single-board controllers or specialized turnkey devices and not become unrecyclable garbage as soon as a new generation of PCs comes along and makes them undesirable underperfomers. Someone could develop BIOS replacements that turn the motherboard into a cheap burglar alarm system or router, for example. You got a CPU, RAM slots and various interfaces that could be put to good use even after their life as PCs are over...
People have been mentioning the Xbox, whose BIOS requires signed code both for the dashboard (roughly the OS) and the game discs. So of course the Xbox-Linux Project developed their own Free BIOS, Cromwell (see the bottom of the page), which is more or less just a Linux loader with no Microsoft BIOS code in it. (Other BIOSes like EvolutionX are derivative works of the MS BIOS and thus technically illegal.)
So yeah, there are Free BIOSes, there is a MS BIOS that enforces a signed code restriction, and there has been a need to bypass that restriction.
1) Call me Quixote :)
2) you basically prove my point about legislating "morality"
3) Enslaved by cats? How could we be enslaved by those most gracious rulers of our world?
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There is no "source code", per se, you have to write it yourself for the architecture you want to implement it on. This is just getting underway for X86... I assume that is the problem area he's concerned with, right?
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Power management and IRQ routing is handled by a standard called "ACPI" which must be implemented by the BIOS. But... that's it. In fact the most any system should ever expect of the BIOS is precisely what's in Intel's ACPI specification.
Everything else is done by drivers: from fooling with the IO-APIC to IDE controllers to RAM diagnostics...
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
"m more afraid of boneheaded lawas that restrict fair use... like the DMCA. I've never seen a copy protection scheme that I couldn't break, given the time. I have seen a lot of court cases that I couldn't win, and I have no wish to be involved in one."
Then you had better start worrying.
Your l33t skills won't get you anywhere but prison once it becomes illegal to connect over broadband or the existing phone network with "untrusted" hardware without a license.
And trusted hardware will only run trusted software.
"Trusted" by them, not you.
Until we finally see an arrest over Freenet become a conviction for conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists.
Don't think it could happen?
It almost did. We are this || far away from providing web hosting for material published by "terrorist" groups, resulting in a felony conviction.
It is only a matter of time.
Vote Bush/Cheney back to Texas, or in 4 years you will be a convicted felon and no longer able to vote when they ammend the Constitution to eliminate term limits.
Hold on to your asses.
Ultimately, to make an open BIOS, the most important piece of cooperation you need is from the chipset manufacturers, but ultimately, you need cooperation from every single one of the manufacturers of every piece of silicon on the board.
Of course, once you've flashed a different BIOS onto the board, don't expect to get any support from the board manufacturer- they try to stand behind their product, but that's hard enough for configurations they have been able to test.
It Is, to quote the Open Firmware website, a "specification for a largely machine-independent BIOS based on ANSForth that is capable of probing and initializing plug-in cards that have on-board IEEE-1275 compliant Fcode in their ROMs. "
This would seem to fit the bill exactly.
Look out honey cause I'm usin' technology
Ain't got time to make no apologies
The story submitter wrote:
I can guarantee you that interpretation is incorrect. RMS doesn't advocate for "OSS" (open source software) or anything else to do with the open source movement. He is the founder of the free software movement and the GNU Project which aims to spread software freedom, something the open source movement does not discuss.
Given the following passage from the interview:
I'm guessing that the submitter failed to read the interview. But that wouldn't be the first time.
Digital Citizen
Since when was capitalism failing in the software industry? Last I heard, even the open source companies like Red Hat were making money by selling their products and services to willing consumers. (And don't forget, selling corporate stock on Wall Street.) Microsoft, Apple, id, Adobe, Eidos, etc. are raking in millions to billions by selling software products to willing consumers. And the proprietary software that is not in CompUSA is making lots of money. Anyone care to take a guess at how much money was made from proprietary rendering software in movies like Lord of the Rings and Shrek 2? Or the money made through proprietary software developed by the IT staff in Fortune 500 companies? So please explain, how is capitalism is on its last battle and in need of being saved??
"The State is that great fiction by which everyone lives at the expense of everyone else." -Frederic Bastiat.
This machine is simply a PC with clever packaging and flash added.
The machine I speak of is a Linux computer. Motherboard and integrated hardware that is all supported by Linux. The BIOS directly loads the Linux kernel and is open.
A machine like this would not run win32 at all, would not use an industry bios. That's the expensive part.
Gotta like the name though!
Blogging because I can...
Fuck you.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I highly recommend checking out the project history and overview of architectural and design decisions they've made. Fascinating stuff. (Check the "papers" link on the left side, IIRC.)
Here's a snippet from the project homepage to whet your appetites:
1) for it to work, all components have to be DRM enabled
2) this means you are creating a serial chain of single points of failure, critically dependant on a seriously flawed piece of software called Windows to work
3) it's a technological version 1, worse, it's an MS version 1 hence untrusted
4) it puts an on/off key of the corporate infrastructure in external hands - a bit like the XP serial number which is not always working as expected on rebuild
I know there will be lot of vested interests trying to ram it down our throats, but MS hasn't helped itself in recent months with all their security problems. I think there will be a serious degree of hesitation before this goes anywhere. Make sure you talk about risk - that's all a CEO cares about. That's where the knowledge has to go, and that's why all the FUD is aimed at them: they combine a dangerous lack of knowledge with spending power. A sales persons' dream..
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WIntel has plans your future hardware and it doesn't include the BIOS as it is now. Future versions of Windows with future generations of hardware will adopt a new BIOS spec from Microsoft and Intel. Even if you are fine with the status quo BIOS MS and Intel have other plans. We need an alterantive and RMS has forseen it. The question is why can't RMS get behind LinuxBios?