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Stallman Pushes For Free BIOS

Posted by simoniker on from the freedom dept.

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."

1 of 419 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Link has little info about bios by johannesg · · Score: 5, Interesting
    of course hardware manufacturers don't like to release the details of the hardware.

    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...