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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."
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.
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.
No. Microsoft and others have created a nasty piece of technology including BIOS modifications which, working with other modifications and additions to standard PC hardware, will not only lock users out of performing certain actions but could be used to allow total control over end user machines by Microsoft or the government (or your personal least favorite organization), regardless of how tech-savvy the end user might be.
Being smart does not make you safe.
Don't reply about how you can always gain complete control of your own hardware with enough technical knowledge and time. Read Ross Anderson's TCPA FAQ too see why that still applicable bit of security wisdom isn't sufficient to throw off the yoke of TC. Go here for all the technical nitty gritty if you're not still convinced.
What laws are proliferating that "explicitly ban free software for certain jobs"?
John Kerry is a Joke!
It's a BIOS. What good would making it GNU/BIOS do?
For one thing it may lower costs for some, others who just pirate the firmware could just be legit. I don't know what the current fee is for an Award/AMI/Phoenix bios but it's gotta be a good percent of the retail cost of a motherboard.
From an end user perspective it may be easier to add features that are absent, or update EOL boards. One thing that come to mind from ages past was NCR/Symbios boot support. Present in some, absent in others. How many geeks have too many PCs and wouldn't mind using a console port rather then having to drag a monitor in just to change a few bios settings. Just to name a couple,
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
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.
If you don't have control, you'll have to hack proprietary. It might lead to a high court ruling that modding is illegal but this time for your PC.
With all the DRM-lock hype, will we take a "general purpose computer" for granted after a few years? If we're only sold special purpose multimedia computers, business computers and communication computers?
Given a few years, are you expected to be able to modify and hack on your not-a-computer but a-computing-appliance? Minding the copyright controls, hacking hardware or commercializing hacking tools might be as illegal as modchipping PlayStations in the UK currently.
Example: similarly to selling non-general purpose gaming computers (XBox), MS could stop selling Windows for "general purpose computers" and only license it to "advanced multimedia and business computer(tm)" manufacturers. The strategy would be enforced with the latest whizbang-DRMized TCPA BIOS. Want to buy general computing hardware after that? It'll be as easy and cheap as buying a BeBox or Amiga ten years ago.
There's no "of course" about it. Ten years ago, almost all hardware manufacturers released details of hardware routinely. Back in 1994, I was programming video boards (S3 based, and Targa) using hardware specs provided by the manufacturer. Their reasoning was that providing programming specs resulted in more software being written for their boards, which would result in more sales. Makes sense, doesn't it?
What has changed is that now Microsoft is a powerful monopoly with a strong interest in preventing other operating systems from supporting as wide a variety of hardware as Windows. It concludes restrictive agreements (whose terms are usually secret) with hardware manufacturers. That's a big part of the reason why it is less common today than 10 years ago for hardware manufacturers to release specs.
Why is that so natural? It used to be, when you bought a computer you got the entire schematic and a complete description of all the hardware registers. Up until the 16-bit generation you could buy that documentation for a small price - I know, I still have my "Amiga Hardware Reference Manual" gathering dust somewhere at home.
But all of a sudden it is no longer possible. Why?
I can at least tell you this: it isn't because hardware API's, all of a sudden, have become so unique, so incredibly advanced, that just telling people about register layout would cause vital secrets to escape the company. So having gotten that out of the way, why then?
It could be argued that it is a hassle actually writing documentation. But this cannot be the problem: the documentation must still exist for those few people who write drivers today. So that isn't it either.
Then it is possible that some sort of licensing scheme prohibits the companies from actually making the information public. Licensing from whom, I wonder? Who benefits from keeping this information locked up? I won't answer this one, but I bet you can guess...
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
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.
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!
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
But the real advantage of trusted computing is to make it so that you can boot a machine and be certain that it is not running any type of trojan or malware.
</quote>
Microsoft said the same thing about signed activex controls in their browser, and look where that got us?
"The problem with socialism is that [...]"
Socialism? Karl Marx did not invent sharing. At the end of the day, sharing is the heart of RMS's philosophy.
Communism and socialism both encompass a great many things that I've never heard RMS advocating.
"[...] but it is still charity. The OSS community is a socialist community."
Um, I hate to be argumentetive about this, but honestly if you equate charity with socialism then you don't understand one or the other.
"Now go ahead and mark me a troll for having an unpopular opinion."
I'd be just fine with an 'unpopular' opinion, but a flat out misinformed opinion is pretty unacceptable.
"I don't drink RMS's cool aid"
How could you when you are already drunk on Gates' champagne? Your arguments betray a profound misunderstanding if the nature of charity and philanthropy and it's role in a capitalist society.
-Tom
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*.
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.....
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...
You're probably trolling, but what do I care :-)
Stallman doesn't do this for his own interests, as far as I understand the word anyway (I'm not a native english speaker, so my understanding is limited.) He believes that for many reasons it is better for people to have the source of the programs they use. Even more, they should be allowed to change it, recompile it and redistribute it.
If it was only about his own interests, he'd ask for the BIOS of the computer he has. He asks for all BIOSs, because he cares about us all, not only about himself. I tend to like people who do that :-)
But the real advantage of trusted computing is to make it so that you can boot a machine and be certain that it is not running any type of trojan or malware.
Actually, it just means that when you get a DRM-Enabled virus or trojan, your anti-virus scanner can't detect it, because the memory is "protected". This _is_ one of the design goals, because if any program is able to read the memory of another, encryption keys can be extracted.
Hardware DRM will hurt the problem, not help it.
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.
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.
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
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: