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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."
yes micro$oft are creating a lockdown bios called trusted computing for some info on trusted computing read this:- http://www.againsttcpa.com
If you have nothing useful to say post as AC.
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
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.
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.
The time it takes to go through the BIOS startup is not determined by the design of the BIOS as it is, but by the time it takes to do certain tests and the artifical delays added to display certain information to the user.
Most BIOSes have option settings to select between fast and good tests, and to speedup the process.
The Dell systems at work are well underway booting the OS before the CRT has even warmed up.
I think the boot time advantage is not worth the trouble.
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.
Insightful? No. It has nothing to do with what you would have to pay money for. That's free as in beer. This is about free as in speech; even though the motherboard manufacturers may charge money for it, you would have access to read and modify the application.
People should not fear their government. Governments should fear their people.
Stallman did quite a bit of work on the Objective C compiler. As is mentioned in this article on GNUStep.
Modern Macs, Suns and PowerPC CHRP systems all use Open Firmware, which is a significantly nicer boot system than a standard PC BIOS. As another poster pointed out, there is a free implementation available. Moving the x86 world to Open Firmware would be beneficial to hardware manufacturers, since they would only need to write a single piece of ROM code, rather than one for x86 and one for (almost) everything else. It would be some effort for operating system developers, since operating systems would have to be modified to boot from Open Firmware (not a problem for Linux, *BSD, etc, since they already support OF on non-x86 platforms).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
RTFA
Unlikely, beside, the large number of people who used Napster, and still use P2P to download copyright material, clearly demonstrates that mere legislation is not the same as effective enforcement.
and Linus stated in an interview that he didn't oppose to DRM in Linux, so you might HAVE to accept it
Unless you (or someone else) take advantage of the rights afforded by the GPL to take the Linux source code and remove any DRM code from it, whatever Linus thinks about it. That's the whole point about the software freedoms which the GPL was designed to ensure.
flossie
Write now. Defend liberty
Open Firmware is at least non-proprietary, and is used by Sun and Apple on their computers
There is even an open source implementation of Open Firmware in the form of OpenBIOS.
There is also a commercial implementation of Open Firmware from FirmWorks.
I should note that that IBM RS/6000 machines also use Open Firmware.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
interesting point. as i recall, the open bios project (it may have been linuxbios, don't quote me) booted so fast that you had a console prompt before the HD had spun up necessitating a reboot while the hardware caught up...
hardware, software... wetware is where I live...
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a thumb.
It's only going to get worse from here on out. Ironically, while the patent system was originally designed to encourage publication, it is rife with problems currently which actually encourage secrecy, because that's the only way to avoid being the target of a lawsuit over some vague concept that a competitor happened to hold a patent on. Of course, you will have your own patents on vague concepts, so it's only a matter of who fires first. The hope with the secrecy approach is that nobody fires, because in the end the only winners are the lawyers.
LRC, the best-read libertarian site on the web
I wonder how this could have been moderated as Insightful, as it really shows a clear lack of understanding of the industry.
1. Is ACPI the problem, or is the free OS support for it the problem? How is creating a new standard going to solve this?
2. My last three computers all booted from USB devices. I actually turned this off in the BIOS as it slowed down boot times as it scanned by 6 in 1 flash memory reader looking for a boot target.
3. Umm, the bioses already do support a generic method of booting off the network. It's called PXE. The reason why the ethernet card has to have some support for it, is because.... uhh, well, gee, duh... it's the part of the system doing all the work. to implement your scheme, you'd be tied to one particular network chipset.
4. Oh you mean like what Intel has done in their server boards? I have an SE7210TP1 board at home in my server, and it has a serial console.
5. Most of those limitations are hardware derived, not bios.
6. Good god, how far back are you going? Every machine I've bought since like 1997 has booted from CD.
7. IRQs? I don't think I've had to worry about that since DOS days.
Yeah, a generic, free BIOS/firmware could do all that... but most likely it won't. Certainly not as quickly as what one can already get by simply buying a quality motherboard today.
Besides, the industry is starting to move away from the whole BIOS concept.
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."
you can "pretend" to follow DRM procedures, but in point of fact, do whatever you want...all the DRM calls can go to: int preventcopy(){ return 1; }
The entire point of Trusted Computing is that if you do that then you cannot read any of the encrypted files in the first place. You cannot install any of the new software. You cannot access the new websites. And with Cisco's Network Admission Control routers you can even be denied internet access.
All of the new files and communications are encrypted. If your system is not fully compliant then you are unable to decrypt anything.
It's a total lockout. Either "voluntarily" submit, or nothing new works.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
I am a programmer. I have been studying the Trusted Computing engineering specifications. I am a rabid opponent of Trusted Computing. I have been compiling my own private list of ways to attack/defeat Trusted computing.
I have written umpteen multipage posts explaining things here on slashdot, but I don't feel like typing a mulit-page post right now. If you want detailed/technical answers about Trusted Computing just ask.
I just want to point out that many of the things you suggest just won't work. Microsoft is not stupid, they KNOW that existing DRM is worthless and pretty easy to defeat. Microsoft is so keen on Trusted Computing exactly because it "solves" the attacks you suggest.
To make it as short as possible, none of the new files will be readable except on a Trusted Computing compliant hardware. None of the new software will be installable/runnable except on compliant hardware. Websites will be unviewable except on compliant hardware. You can be denied internet access unless you have compliant hardware.
And you cannot manufacture such hardware unless you have approval and a crypto-signature from the Trusted Computing Group.
Sure, China is free to manufacture any hardware they like. But it will NOT have the Trusted Computing Groups signature, therefore it will not work. It won't be able to read anything, and it won't be able to communicate with any other Trusted machine.
Yes, there are attacks on Trusted Computing, but do NOT underestimate the enemy. Things are more difficult than you think, and they have a VERY plausible and insidious plan to impose Trusted Computing on all of us. Anyone who refuses to submit would eventually be unable to run any new software or get on the internet at all.
About the only way to stop Trusted Computing is if there is a massive public backlash against it.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.