Slashdot Mirror
Stallman Calls For Action on Free BIOS
Dolda2000 writes "Seeking to achieve 100% software freedom, RMS is now calling for action for a free BIOS. From the article: "The most uncooperative company is Intel, which has started a sham 'open source' BIOS project. The software consists of all the unimportant parts of of a BIOS, minus the hard parts. It won't run, and doesn't bring us any closer to a BIOS that does. It is just a distraction. By contrast, AMD cooperates pretty well." For reference, there are currently two projects for a free BIOS that I know of: LinuxBIOS and OpenBIOS."
It makes sense, to me anyways, to have an open bios. How can one claim to run a free system when their very boot process is hidden and secretive?
Sounds like bias in bios
http://www.sandstorming.com
I can't really imagine a free piece of software that will undoubtedly render some people's motherboards totally unusable.
Admittedly, not many people actually screw up their motherboards today because of company-supplied BIOS updates, but in my opinion the most likely reason for that is that most people don't update their motherboard's BIOS.
I think this is a necessary problem to solve for a host of reasons (the most pressing in my mind being removing "Trusted Computing Initiatives" or DRM) but I can't imagine who might be willing to distribute such a thing because of the liability concerns.
I'm a big tall mofo.
Does Anyone know what Intel gets out of not opening it up? Are there any IP issues?
Evolution or ID?
to create "free" BIOS help Intel? Would gain market share? Would it somehow end up with a new revenue stream that it cannot access with its current marketing and other strategies? What can it gain by winning over a bunch of geeks?
This is not flame bait. I am just trying to understand why corporations like Intel would cooperate.
All I can say is stop whining and move on.
BP http://www.card-central.com
Maybe, they were having a meeting to discuss sorting out the issues that have recurred over the last few weeks.
The troops are restless so to speak.
Either that, or they are sorting out a dupe lottery. Prizes given to the person who re-submits stories onto the front page.
liqbase
That'll be great to get a really good Open Source BIOS - we'll have new features and capabilities not ever thought of before: who knows, maybe we'll see a Nintendo Emulator for our POST...
An open-source BIOS is something I'd really appreciate having, especially with the big corporations moving towards their big 'Trusted Computing' platform. It's MY hardware and I'll runn whatever the hell I want on it, not what some mega-corporate conglomerate decides I should.
- Unzip the self-extracting archive.
- Find the disk image included therein, and burn it to CD-RW as an ElTorito bootable CD. (With nothing in the data track.)
- Boot from CD and flash BIOS.
- Erase CD-RW.
- Don't Profit!
I'd love to have an alternative to the BIOS which is open source, or free software, or both. That way I can finally claim to have a computer completely free of closed, proprietary software. And maybe have a chance of configuring the hardware a little better as well. Dell's BIOS is painfully short on options.How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
The troops are restless so to speak.
Maybe they're asleep? Is there some sort of shift rota?
If you want to run the open source parts of panther you might as well run a BSD or Linux, Apple edoesn't bring anything new to the table.
You can help our campaign by buying AMD CPU chips and not buying Intel, and by publishing statements about what you're doing. Likewise, buy motherboards that support free BIOS.
According to the FreeBIOS website, Acer , Via and SiS support it . And it will probably see a LOT of Bochs in testing too. So I might opt for an Acer laptopt finally (it's cheap too)Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
Apple uses open firmware for their boot mechanism, which is already pretty "open"
The problem with a motherboard BIOS is that it's tailored to the motherboard. Could the open source fratenity actually produce a workable product across a large number of motherboards? Would they produce something that works properly on all of them, instead of having modules that have been got to a state where they're good enough for the hacker creating them, but not Joe average on the street.
To be honest, if it's just a BIOS clone, I won't be interested anyway - wake me up when someone recreates OpenFirmware for the PC.
At least it has open in its name... Show me the source or read up on what open source is.
I think that an open BIOS could really change things. The bios is something that hasn't seen true development or innovation since it's inception. Many products have been used by the masses, and not improved, untill FOSS was there to take it's job, and then they got on the ball, and they started competing with each other. This benefits everybody in the end. Besides, anybody who has ever done any OS or bootstrapping development, knows that there are way to many peculiar BIOSs out there, that have to be planned for. They load your code at different locations, they set the registers to different values, and your left wasting those first 512 bytes, just cleaning up what the bios did.
LinuxBIOS is not a BIOS, it's a non-standard firmware interface.
This is pretty much OK for embedded use, but for anything where you need standard BIOS functionality, it's useless. Worse, the name "LinuxBIOS" implies that it is BIOS functionality, which causes people to try to use it in inappropriate situations.
I expect there is, but the GP was correct, theres not normally such a wide gap between articles.
(Unless goatse has suddenly become an editor)
liqbase
It might just be me being naïve, but would Intel really go to such lengths to create a "distraction"? I find it a bit paranoid to think they'd start a project with the sole intention of just slowing down the progress for an open sourced BIOS.
"Anybody who tells me I can't use a program because it's not open source, go suck on rms. I'm not interested. 99% of that I run tends to be open source, but that's _my_ choice, dammit." (Linus Torvalds, October 26, 2004)
Come on. Intel only started their project in the past couple years. If you can't finish Hurd on your own, don't gripe about other projects which aren't moving fast enough for you. Or, hey, maybe you could look in the other kernels... you know, the Open Source kernels which aren't owned by the FSF. They seem to be able to do the job. They've been running all this time, while Hurd hasn't.
Sure, you're going to say Hurd runs. Well, where's the GNU/GNU Distro?
[
This makes it even more critical that we get free software BIOSes, and soon!
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
Instead of wishing, why not start a fund say, initially at a target of about a half million dollars. Then hire a couple of top notch BIOS engineers, and lease a bus and logic analyzer, and a real good oscope. That's the way to do it.
Why is Intel being such an ass? Do they gain from restricting open-source ventures, they could only help themselves by allowing strictly open-source geeks like myself access to the bios.
As many of you already should know; creating a fully usable BIOS takes more than just programming code. A certain amount of magic is also needed. Magic is not, has never and will never be open source. Magic is closed source for many good reasons.
Microsoft knows magic. Linus Torvalds, RMS et al. does not.
I predict that Microsoft will create an XP based BIOS is the near future.
Magic, BIOS, Microsoft. Let's have som cake.
The problem with a statement like "We need a Free BIOS" is exactly what you mean by "BIOS".
There are two extremes to the schools of thought on this.
The first is the minimalist: The BIOS is just enough code to put the machine into a state where it can load the real OS, and once the real OS is loaded the BIOS is no longer relevant. At a minimum this code would just set up the basics of the machine, and then load some section of the hard disk into memory and jump to it.
The second is the maximalist: The BIOS should provide abstract access to all hardware so that the OS does not have to have drivers. The BIOS would provide routines for the disk controller, video, human interface systems (mouse/keyboard/etc.), memory control, system control, you name it. The OS would never get its hands dirty accessing real hardware.
Both of these approaches have problems. The Minimalist approach means the OS has to support all hardware - which is the lament those of us who don't run Microsoft operating systems will sometimes have. If your OS does not know about your shiny new FooCard then you are out of luck. In the ideal Maximalist case, the BIOS would supply routines to access all the functions of the FooCard and your OS would Just Work no matter what.
However, the problem with the ideal Maximalist approach is that desiging a BIOS API that will work with all operating systems is HARD . Your BIOS has to have a means of calling back into the OS (since real, non-trivial drivers need to have things like semaphores, queues, interrupt handlers, rescheduling points, etc.), but then you have to insure that all operating systems supply all those APIs with the same semantics.
Now, ask yourself, if you designed a BIOS callback API around the Windows semantics (drivers cannot block, drivers must schedule a deferred procedure call if they cannot complete, drivers cannot cause a page fault to swap) how different it would be from a Unix-y style callback (drivers can block, drivers can pagefault from swap, drivers run til they are done).
The current thoughts are "The OS knows best what to do, let the OS have the drivers".
Now, in the context of a Free driver, you have to decide where between the Minimalist and the Maximalist you want to draw the line. Do you want to force the OS to have the code to set up the memory handlers and PCI bridges, for example? If the OS can handle reprogramming the PCI bridges it sure makes PCI hotplugging a great deal easier!
If you look at the LinuxBIOS approach, it is more of a maximalist approach targeting the Linux kernel. This is great if you run Linux, but what if you want to run *BSD, or Windows, or CP/M-86?
It would be possible, barely, to do like my old Multia did - provide BOTH a Windows friendly BIOS and a *nix friendly BIOS, and a means to switch between them. But now you've just doubled (actually more than doubled) the work for a system manufacturer - he has to write a BIOS for Windows, a BIOS for Linux, an BIOS for NetBSD....
"Just publish the specs, and we will write the driver!"
Again, publishing all the specs is hard - there's always that little "Oh yeah, we found that if the temp is less than 5C you have to wait an additional 50uS for this part to respond to a query - it's not intended behavior but it is observed behavior, Charlie found that out."
And even if you can completely document all the specs, there is still the little issue of "How do I, the end user, get the BIOS for *my* OS flashed onto this board?" - if you think the manufacturers are going to flash boards with seventeen different BIOSes depending upon the customers whims... I have some oceanfront property in Goddard, KS to sell you.
Then there is the issue of add-in cards - how do you integrate any BIOS they may have on them into the BIOS on your motherboard?
Now, I know somebody will point out OpenFirmware - the idea that the cards provide drivers in a bytecoded language targeting an API
www.eFax.com are spammers
actually, Intel cooperates quite a bit, by maitaining their own network cards or providing 2 or 3 developers for the linux acpi subsystem:
diego@estel ~/kernel # grep -i @intel.com MAINTAINERS | wc -l
11
Isn't it really time for some improvements in the bios area? Most OSes today don't use much of what is there, and the BIOS only function is to set up a number of parameters most non-overclockers/non-nerds could care less about.
What about making something more useful than what is there now? Something that could have more features, such as replacing grub all together? (as in be able to boot any of your OSes on any any kind of bootable hardware) Maybe even have it run *gasp* in 32/64-bit mode and leave all the old horrors of x86 BIOSes behind, and maybe even make it possible to tailer it to other kinds of hardware (not x86).
If they want people to support this, they really need to add some value to the whole thing, as many do care less about holier-than-thou hippiness.
This is a good starting place. "I have a dream" that someday we can have open hardware as well as software (aka www.opencores.org).
Man is the lowest-cost, 150-pound, nonlinear, all-purpose computer system which can be mass-produced by unskilled labor.
I mean, leaving aside the "free-as-in-speech" angle, surely the "free-as-in-beer" angle has undeniable attractions?
Is it really just a case of the dominant vendors wanting to use BIOS quirks to lock-in their market share?
If you had read the article by Stallman you'd have found out that Stallmann is specifically asking people that agree with him on the need for a free bios to boycott Intel and tell them about the reason for boycotting them.
So what Stallman is trying to do is build a market force that will persuade Intel that it is in its best interest to create a free bios or at least to not stand in the way of creating one.
Hope this answers your question.
RMS, seeking 100% freedom, calls for a free governement. He was quickly carried off to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba for what was called a "debriefing". Knowledgable sources have stated that he will be released "someday".
Get Sun to release it's OpenBoot Prom which is following the IEEE-1275 Open Firmware standard. I think that even Apple is trying to follow this standard.
See http://playground.sun.com/pub/p1275/ or http://bananajr6000.apple.com/1275/home.html for more information.
Wrong - To me it's still Linux, but quite a bit of the code is RMS's.
This is a greatly injust comment to the man who started the free software movement. Please note that RMS is the man behind gcc, the most important free piece of software in existance.
Intel support sucks....
They might have some great people working on linux but the company in general just doesn't care.
It took intel a full year before they had even half decent support for their wireless chipset despite promisses that they would support it when promoting it.
They refuse to release proper specs on their video chipsets in order to let X use the proper panel size on a laptop.
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
Look, I'm tired of fscking waiting for things to show up in BIOS that *should* already be there. Glaring case in point:
...and no, I don't want some retarded, retrograde pseudo-asembler wantabe (aka forth) lerking in the BIOS.
iscsi (in particular, the ability to boot off of a remote iscsi target)
Next consider that hardware and feature support is *NOT* consistent across BIOS lines, motherboards, or even manufactures. Throw into that various vintages of BIOS and there becomes a real *NEED* for a consistent, cross platform BIOS.
A free BIOS would make it easier to trust "Trusted Computing" (for the consumer that is) and easier to circumvent DRM.
Some onboard boot code is certainly required, but I would like the BIOS to stay as minimal as possible. Basically, just enough to load the bootloader.
There is trend toward larger and more featureful BIOS. I just don't understand that. Everything that can be done by the OS should be. Updating an OS is much easier than a BIOS, for starter.
And while you are there, why not drop the DOS-supporting cruft ? (like most of the BIOS software interrupts, for example)
:wq
I could be completely stupid, but isn't one of the jobs of the BIOS the configuration of the chipset and any embedded devices? For instance, an embedded AGP chipset that "Shares" some of the system RAM for video RAM, or a southbridge with several optional devices that may or may not actually be used on the motherboard.
The many and myriad chipsets out there all have quirks and special setup needs, even in really simple configurations. Chipsets have many registers that may need to be configured based on the layout of the traces on the motherboard - I've seen older VIA chipsets with registers for timing delays and (I think) slew rates on IO pins.
This would require a small army (or a company like, say... oh, I don't know... PHOENIX) to not only sift through the mountains of often crappy documentation to squeeze the most out of the chipset, while keeping the board stable.
If it's a choice between a stable, well-tweaked CLOSED BIOS and an unstable, lowest-common-performance-denominator OPEN BIOS, I'll pick the closed one, thanks.
do we really need a BIOS?
Can we live and power our computers without one?
Why don't we strip all obsolete junk away, i.e. the A20 gate? Once we do that, why don't we get rid of the BIOS itself?
The less hardware and software, the more direct access we'll have to the hardware, and the less software-wrappers we'll have around hardware -> higher speed, less code, more time for important things.
I can't answer those questions. Can you?
"All you have to do is be fragile and grateful. So stay the underdog." Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
A most certain bias towards freedom, liberty, and the ability to control your own way.
:)
I agree, its a bias!
Even if they do standardize, an open BIOS would leave just the barebones hardware as non-free code. Sure, it isn't the usual software code we like to tinker with, but it's code. Is there any kind of open motherboard project going on?
Yes, everything that people rely on should be open.
l
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/can-you-trust.htm
Once the entire of manufacturing moves to China, they could design extra features into Chips which would be virtually impossible to detect before its too late. Then they could easily control your hardware/software and jsut about everything.
The only way out of this is distributed self control through knowledge of the underlying system, by using an 'Open' system.
This is not far fetched! States, companies and individuals have always wanted to control others throughout all time.
It's not open source, but it's completely documented and anyone can feel free to create a new implementation. That seems pretty good to me.
Who really gives a rats butt less what Stallman says anymore. I mean he's gained a Billy Grahm status among nerds that put politics before innovation. Every time I've seen Stallman, he's walking around with a bunch of losers chasing after him hoping that he'll remember their name. If you denounce Stallman to these people, they might actually form a mob and lynch you.
There was a point in time when RMS would start writing a project and people would join in and work on it with him. What's the point of someone like Stallman standing up and yelling "There should be an open source BIOS". It's a waste of time. Either start coding or find a company interested in the project and get a team together to do it. This type of behaviour on his behalf is nothing but an old has-been seeing if he can get his groupies in a frenzy.
If you want to see how far back his type goes, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publius_Clodius and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Caelius_Rufus
He really is nothing more than some guy that found out that if stands on a soap box yelling something, a bunch of people are going to gather around and cheer while the people doing the real work just squirm.
Probably not and I can see how you could read it that way. Another meaning might also be that Intel released a tiny fraction of what's really needed and left all the heavy lifting to the community. While AMD is taking a more cooperative approach. That's the way it came across to me. From Intel's perspective I really doubt it's any attempt to create a community distraction, it's more likely they think they have bigger fish to fry. IMHO they're just giving AMD another opportunity to kick their ass.
It'll be interesting to see if manufacturers ever team up to create lines of Linux-friendly hardware for the desktop and laptop market. When I build my boxes I'd certainly pick from that list. Apple has demonstrated the economic viability of a hardware nitch market.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Everyone should support and increase the compatibility of OpenBIOS!
OpenFirmware is the best BIOS standard ever, the joy of being able to code
from the command line and have non-interrupt-hijacking calls to the firmware,
a rudimentary HAL etc. is absolutely 100% cool.
It won't improve your Windows experience but who the hell cares about that?
It already has the support of Apple, Sun, SGI and IBM, comes in 32 and 64bit
versions in the standard, has a framebuffer, text console that redirects to
serial, video etc. automatically, blah blah blah.. Intel won't support it
because they like EFI.
But forget Intel too
Everyone should move to PowerPC, but then call me biased..
That's got to be the most ignorant anti-RMS post I've read in a long while.
"after all you're the guy that "invented" emacs while other people actually wrote it,"
He did invent emacs and rewrote it numerous times before the GNU version. I suppose you're referring to the fact that there are now more contributions to the code from other people than there are from RMS. This is true, but it doesn't mean that history is rewritten and emacs has suddenly been invented by someone else.
Linux has more contributions from people other than Torvalds but I don't suppose anyone would dispute that Torvalds invented Linux.
"then went on to try to rename linux, which other people had written.
You're confused about what Linux is. Linux is a kernel and RMS refers to this kernel as Linux, always has and always will. He does however request that people refer to the GNU system that uses Linux as a kernel as GNU/Linux -- the Linux suffix as recognition of the fact that Linux plays an important part in the overall system.
Note that he doesn't insist on it or asks that a Linux based system that isn't GNU based, be called GNU/Linux.
"We need results and not just complaints."
What? Results like the GNU system? Or is that not good enough?
Using your line of reasoning, it would be easy to admonish Torvlads for doing nothing but create a kernel. Where's the user-land tools? The BSD people provide those after all, why shouldn't Linus?
The point is, Linus doesn't need to because other people have already done it. Likewise, RMS doesn't need to provide a kernel because other people have already done it. It's called cooperation; the idea at the very centre of the Open Source and Free Software movements.
I expect this sort of crap from non-F/OSS users but from people who actually use and value F/OSS, it's bordering on the idiotic. Rather like someone punching the face of the person who's feeding him.
I'm sorry, but you're making a wrong assumption: this is not a zero-sum game. A zsg would require a situation where every gain on your opponent's side is a loss for you. Software development doesn't work that way. If you "invest" in creating new software that's freely shared you increase the pie, so to speak. By allowing other people to use your work and not requiring them to re-invent the wheel there is a net gain for the community, including you, since you benefit from others. This is a principle that might be hard to understand for someone who accepts the tenets of capitalism as the only ones possible (I do not wish to insult you, but many Americans seem terribly narrow-minded and uninformed in that respect, having been tought from childhood that everything related to communism is "bad" without ever going into detail).
-- Language is a virus from outer space.
RMS is not only the last person I would expect to put ego above cause, he is one of the few people in the world who truely understands what he started.
I wish people would just chill about the guy.
Kind Regards
"A few great minds are enough to endow humanity with monstrous power, but a few great hearts are not enough to make us w
Stallman doesn't have ANY room to talk about software that is taking a long time to develop.
Intel is actually trying to get rid of BIOS (that is controlled by PHOENIX), pushing its own "Extensible Firmware Interface" (http://www.intel.com/technology/efi/), which seems to be something like OpenFirmware reinvented.
The license on the download page looks like a standard 2 clause BSD license.
Right now I'm running an AMI bios, a VIA chipset and an AMD processor. Shouldn't an open-source BIOS be subject to regular standards organizations, rather than a vendor?
The WRT54G firmware is not a BIOS, it is more like the complete OS of an embedded system. Below this firmware is another layer of software (I can't recall the name) whose job is to boot the firmware via tftp if boot_wait is set, for example.
Really, I would not want my BIOS to include a shell and a web server !
:wq
The GPL version of open source is not going to work, especially if you want an entire system from thousands of different vendors to be 100% open source. It's hard enough to get industry-wide standards adopted WITHOUT requiring everyone to give their products away for free.
The only thing that will work is to either reinvent the wheel from scratch, in your own country, under communism, and hope you'll succeed where no one else has. (China seems to be making progress).
-OR-
Come up with an open source license that doesn't take away control of finished products from companies who haven't yet had a chance to earn a profit from their work
The GPL doesn't work, it requires immediate release of source that can be used by competitors or would-be customers, and eliminates the profit motive.
The BSD license doesn't work because it doesn't require the release of source.
The only license I know of that might work is the Zesiger License because it allows companies to use open source in their products, and keep their source closed (like BSD) for two years before they're required to release the source (like GPL).
Two years of marketing and sales ought to be enough time for most companies to earn a profit on their work. The end result will be that instead of having two factions, Stallman and his followers, and Gates and his followers, with a fence in the middle, you end up with the two factions cooperating, and using each other's work to produce great products.
Isn't that the real goal anyway?
considering how mac users have been using open firmware for years, we can only laugh.. well that and wonder why you need a new GPL BIOS to compete with it.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
He's done some very good things, but his goals may not all be relevant to me - and I said show us the code because results are often more relevant than goals. Simple proof of concept stuff says a lot more than ranting - I should have just left it as "show us the code" instead of putting in my own rant.
I really don't think RMS slamming Intel is going to acheive anything positive at all. RMS setting up some sort of BIOS group instead of just slamming Intel would acheive something.
Aim Here and jrumney are correct (and explain it nicely, thanks guys). Retric and MO appear to be wrong or at least confusing/misleading here ;).
Basically, if you want to distribute a product propriatarily, you should keep your hands off code that's released under the GPL, unless you own the copyright to that code yourself, in which case you can dual-license it under a different license.
Most "dumb Americans" who believe in capitalism also believe very strongly that life is not a zero sum game - it is generally the "enlightened liberals" who ignore or excuse Stalin's purges and other such nasty side effects of Communism who think that life is a zero sum game.
But you know all about us and we're narrow-minded and ingnorant, right?
so what's the problem? Shun Intel, Buy AMD.
Intel is looking elsewhere than BIOS. Intel and Windows are forming an alliance called "Framework" (this is not related to .net framework). The intension is to eliminate problems that might be caused by BIOS, among other reasons.
Where AMD, award&phoenix are not invited obviously... this is to keep intel's edge over this strategy Hence, this openBIOS is not in the best interest of Intel.
Noone, not even RMS himself, says that he's written it all himself, but he most certainly did write parts of it -- large parts. In particular, he was the one who started writing them.
And you actually say that RMS don't have any good merits? If you want to see RMS's code -- really, just look at emacs, just look at gcc, just look at the GNU coreutils. RMS has written a lot of code. He does have a lot of goals that you might not agree with, but he has most certainly written a lot of code as well. If you had bothered to read the actual article, you'd see that he wasn't actually slamming at Intel that much. He was slamming at Intel, but that was just a very small part of the article. The major part of the article was about the importance of a free BIOS. In the article, RMS was trying to draw attention to the importance of writing a free BIOS, and also to pressure hardware manufacturers (not just Intel specifically) to leave out specifications in order to be able to write a free BIOS. I'm sure he would set up a free BIOS group, but to be honest, the man has pretty much else to do -- he can't do it all himself, and then blogging about it may be the next best thing to do.I think in a few years' time, we'll see technology that could be adapted to a garage electronics shop. Some things might still have to be purchased from a commercial vendor, like silicon wafers and such, but I've seen plenty of articles in MIT Technology Review during the last 5 years that really look like they could allow hobbyists to cheaply produce their own microelectronics.
I think the hard part is going to be getting our hands on the software needed to design the things though. Here's some info that might might get you started if you want to browse for more ideas - http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2004May/bch20040 525025304.htm
GPL licenses do not. Essentialy I write GPL software and I cannot use it in any commercial projects.
If you wrote it, then it's yours, and you can do whatever the hell you want with it. Even if you release code as GPL, you can also stick it in commercial products without GPL'ing them. Other people can't, but you can as you own the copyright on that code.
Unless you're planning on suing yourself for GPL violations, that is.
Anybody who comes back and submits patches to you is creating a derivative work and releasing it back to you under the GPL. So you can't use other people's patches to your work in commercial products in that case. A BSD license would avoid this but would also let anybody else use the code commercially without forcing them to release the changes they made.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I was at FOSDEM, listened to Stallman's speech, and he didn't mention the BIOS once. His speech was him ranting somewhat incoherently about copyright law, and telling everyone to avoid Adobe.
Before we start to discuss on creating a FreeBIOS, I would like to ask, how do you flash your motherboard BIOS in a GNU/Linux Operating system?
Do we have a UniFlash counterpart in GNU/Linux?
(Btw, UniFlash is a DOS utility.)
Because AFAIK, I still have to boot a DOS floppy in order to have my motherboard BIOS flashed; or rely on tricks like creating a Bootable USB flashdrive wilth DOS on it.
Can management remain happy by keeping their baby to themselves, or would GPL require that the source to 'a' be made available?
If this code is all purely internal, and you're not distributing it outside the company, then you can do essentially whatever you want. The GPL only really covers distribution in that respect. It does have some words about modification of GPL'd code, but nothing there requires you to release or distribute your modifications to other people.
The above assumes someone else wrote 'b' and 'c'. How would the scenario change if I wrote 'b' and 'c'? Would it then be possible to keep management happy, and if so what would the licensing structure be?
If you wrote B and C, and don't have some clause where all your work is owned by the company, then it's a different matter. You own the copyright, so you can do essentially whatever the hell you want. If the company owns the copyright, then you'd have to convince them to release B and C as GPL instead.
But essentially, the owner of a piece of code can do anything they damn well please. The only catch here is in accepting patches back from other people. If you release a piece of code as GPL and somebody makes a patch, then they have created a derivative work and it's under the GPL now with respect to you. So you can't take those patches and then shove them back into something you're doing. Oh, you can if the ABC software is only distributed internally, you just can't relicense those patches under any other type of licensing scheme.
The point here is that if ABC is something you only use internally anyway, then it makes little difference what the licensing scheme on the code is. You just can't come back and distribute ABC later. If distributing ABC as a whole is a possibility, then licensing matters, but assuming all of ABC was written by people in the company or by you or what have you, then it doesn't matter all that much. You're hardly likely to sue yourself for violation of your license.
The only case where you have to watch it is when you release GPL'd code and accept patches back. You don't own those patches, and they are GPL'd to you. Accepting patches is a problem if you want to distribute ABC later.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
This has been the most creative thing I've seen in a long time dealing with computers. An open BIOS would really give users a whole new world of functionality ranging from emulators, add-ons/plug-in, boot-time unified hardware drivers, and replacing the poor functionality of modern boot loaders which often frustrate me with rediculously cryptic meathodology that could be simplifed for beeter ease of use adn more functionality. This possibilities are endless.
Perhaps, this shall also prompt hardware developers such as Intel to be more creative too in their firmware designs, giving users the options they want. This is very interesting, as it will take both open source and propreitary to a new level as standards of quality are rasied. I love competition, because only through competition does innovation come... open source is just what the doctor ordered to jump start innovation in a field of computing that has been left in the dust for over 20 years. Let the BIOS Wars begin
But if someone's done gone and reverse-engineered stuff to the point of being able to write a substitute BIOS, doesn't that render hiding low-level hardware details kinda moot?
One suspects there's another factor at work: pressure from Phoenix/Award (and to a lesser extent AMI, but the huge majority of OEM BIOSs are from Phoenix), since if an opensource BIOS becomes viable enough for motherboard manufacturers to start using it, there's no reason to *license* BIOS code from Phoenix. Yeah, someone's still got to make the physical chips, but they don't exactly have an exclusive lock on that process. And I'd bet their profit lies almost entirely in licensing the base BIOS code.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
He's done some great stuff, but we don't need blind hero worship - we need someone that will talk to Intel and not yell insults and talk about treachery. We've got Intel giving us more and more specs all the time and then RMS comes along and yells at them.
after the first release of a GPL'd BIOS, I bet RMS will get pissed off about the new BIOS being called "FreeBIOS" instead not "GNU/FreeBIOS".
Ain't gonna happen!
"I think Europeans stereotype Americans and their views too narrowly. It makes America easier to understand for them maybe."
Yes, OR maybe that's an easy excuse to downplay any critique on Amerikans and the USA from us europeans.
For sure, there is a danger in using clichés and stereotypes, but it is also true, that those clichés *DO* hold a lot of water. Actually, I can't say I know of any well-established cliché about the nature of a people, that didn't had some truth in it. And that includes those of my own people/country, even though I would be hardpressed to acknowledge them in public. (Something which most USA-citizens seem to have too, only in a bigger national-zealot-reflex manner).
But actually, they ARE true, to a large extend.
The danger comes from turning that cliché into an absolute viewpoint: that ALL europeans or americans are like that. Being rational and honest, no one can actually claim such a thing, of course. So, while I may think that, in general, the USA - and especially it's current government - is arrogant, narrow-minded, uncritical and downright hypocrite idiots, I temper this viewpoint with the knowledge the USA also had and has critical thinkers and rebels that show signs of independend thought, intelligence and a cosmopolitan attitude, like Carl Sagan, M.Moore, R.Stallman and some others I've come to know by their work. Those people certainly deserve respect.
It does not follow the USA as a whole deserves respect. Certainly not like things are going currently. However you want to turn it, you must realise that the USA is behaving like a bully, and is increasingly acting - especially since the end of the cold war - like the world is their backyard where they can do what they want.
This is not surprising, since they ARE currently the only true superpower left, and being the strongest (as bullies usually go), they think everything is permitted. Sooner or later, they will discover their error.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
Intel seems not only to make inferior CPUs but exhibits inferior ethical standards and business practices. I had enough. I am hereby announcing that I will sell my Intel stocks(about 8500 shares of INTC) and my next computer will be an AMD Opteron.
Knowing quite a bit about what goes into a BIOS, why does having an open source BIOS matter? Aside from the technical issues, the BIOS in a standard PC isn't really used much beyond the booting of the machine. Things like ACPI and PnP are pretty well understood now in the open source world, but that is, in reality, a very small portion of the kind of code you find in a BIOS.
Just what kind of code do you find? Well, usually there is lots of stuff specific to the chipset, CPU, and bus. Adapting a BIOS to a particular piece of hardware means knowing exactly how the hardware is wired (PCI interrupt routing, memory configuration, etc). Its not quite as simple as compiling a BSD or Linux kernel.
But with the exception of DOS few operating systems make much use of the BIOS past booting.
While open hardware is a noble goal, having been in the world of the BIOS, I think it should remain closed for the sanity of everybody.
I'm all for an open source startup firmware, but how about something saner than the PC BIOS?
...for anything else than loading the bootloader ??
...or have I misunderstood something ?
M$ do not use it for anything else... and the code is 8 bit (for compatibility with DOS)...
and most OS do their own HW discovery/initialisation...
The early BIOS was there to provide basic I/O support ... hence the name. but not all machines in the day had such a thing. This really came about from the fact that microprocessors were also being utilized in embedded applications involving firmware. So it was natural to think of having a firmware do common parts, like low level hardware support. But big computers, such as IBM mainframes, had no such thing. And they didn't need it. And a PC doesn't need it, either ... especially an I/O API part.
What is really needed to get an operating system started? Really, just a boot loader. The first computer I used was a PDP-8 minicomputer. It had a front panel where you could set switches to define data and address, and store the results into core memory. There was a boot loader program we would manually toggle into core memory when we needed to (core memory, BTW, retained its contents when powered off). That boot loader would then read the paper tape reader and load the operating system. But there was no I/O support from the boot loader. There was no firmware. The OS being loaded was self contained.
The next computer I worked on was an IBM mainframe (several of them, actually). Early models (360 series), did what was call IPL (initial program load) by triggering a single CPU instruction to perform a single channel I/O operation to read from a specified device (selected numerically by dials on the front panel). The first read operation loaded in just enough additional instructions to start more read operations to bring in enough of a boot loader to load the entire OS image. Then it branched to the OS and things took off. Again, there was no firmware I/O support other than these machines did have separate "I/O channel processors". The OS had to do whatever it would do on it's own.
Fast forward to the emergence of BSD and Linux on PC. The BIOS is used to load the boot loader which loads the OS. The boot loaders generally do use the BIOS API, but in theory, they should not have to. The OS (32 bit and 64 bit versions now) don't need, and generally can't use, the BIOS API.
So I say, get rid of it. Let's not have an I/O API in the BIOS anymore. Then let's quit calling it a BIOS (because it won't be that anymore).
That leaves 2 functions which what we now call a BIOS does already, which we still need to do. One is to configure the hardware. This is one of the hard parts because it has to be tailored to the chipset and maybe even CPU involved. The other is to load the operating system.
The hardware configuration could be handled in a different way. By adding on a 2nd smaller (maybe 16-bit) CPU, it can run a firmware program separate from the OS (the host CPU) that not only configures the hardware, but can also constantly monitor it while the OS is running. It could even be networked for those 10,000 machine server farms.
This same extra CPU could also do the boot loading. But it wouldn't need to do much device I/O. It should have the ability to read a few basic devices (serial port, USB, Firewire, floppy, CDROM, ethernet, and IDE/SATA hard drives) sequentially from a specified starting point and load blocks into RAM or into flash memory (or flash to RAM). Put it in a loop and it can do this with megabytes of OS images directly (this serving as the full boot loader). Flash memory of 4MB to 16MB would be plenty (for now).
I doubt we'll ever get a totally non-proprietary machine. But at least by having no more OS to firmware interfacing, we can eliminate some of the issues. And the extra control processor (something the later IBM mainframes already have many of anyway) will enhance the hardware support as well.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
frankly, i don't get the whole "all software must be free" agenda. what's the ethical issue here? i buy a motherboard, i bought the firmware. paying for goods and services is not a bad thing, it's how things seems to work best in society. in other words, it seems to provide the most choice. sure. from this system spring conflicts. sometimes big ones. but it beats every alternative i've ever heard of (or lived under).
if i buy a microwave oven, do i need to replace the "firmware" because it isn't open source? in mr. stallaman's own words, the BIOS is, in essence, hardware.
We all know the whole 80x86 architecture is bodgey and suboptimal ..... people only stick with it because that's what Windows runs on. Why don't we just go out of our way to create a brand new, streamlined design for a hardware platform, using something like Power G5 processors? {And you'll note the plural there.} Not just the BIOS, but the whole motherboard. We could start from scratch, make it totally legacy-free if we so desired; though it'd be stupid not to support USB, SATA and one of the graphics card busses. The entire spec could be open. We could probably even specify repair-friendly stuff like "All ICs to be socketed, all jumper points to be labelled, LED indicators required on foo and bar".
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Essentialy I write GPL software and I cannot use it in any commercial projects.
This is FALSE! You can do anything you want with code you write, including releasing it under dual licenses.
You obviously don't know what you are talking about. Read up on things. Making stupid and completely false statements like this defeats any argument you can make. Looking like idiots here is really killing any logical discussion of GPL alternatives. Personally I would like to see a well-specified LGPL-like thing, where you must release the original source code and patches to it, but can link that in any way into a program constructed of your own code. But as long as anybody arguing against the GPL looks like a loon this is not going to happen.
Maybe you should try actually reading the article next time.
Hint: It has somthing to do with the "Trusted Computing" initiative. (aka Paladium.)
you're right actually. I have been thinking this exact thing while reading down a lot of posts regarding how groups could write an Open BIOS.
Move to PPC hardware. No need for a bios, the hardware has (to my limited knowledge, correct me if I'm wrong) it's own bios on each piece of hardware such as the video, sound, etc. so when you boot, it's instantly accessable. That was the OS doesn't have to supply drivers etc for the hardware.
As one person said here on slashdot: Linux on PPC. The power and security of an operating system, encased in class.
I'm not a fanboy for anyone but it seems like a viable solution if you want to run linux. Just buy the ppc hardware. Sure it may be more expensive. But not having to worry about drivers and things "Just working"... I would love that.
Free bios !?
Free Martha!
not a lawyer, blah blah blah... (legal advice wants to be paid for?)
Paul "Say no to feeping creaturism"
This post isn't meant to be flamebait.. it was a serious question. Why does RMS get any press anymore.. the guy is off his rocker. Seems if you question any of the Open-Source "establishment" around here you get tagged as flamebait. Some serious double standards to "openness".
Although traditionally PCs have not used it, I'd like to see an open firmware PC.
Installing a bios is unethical? Um, WHAT PLANET IS THIS GUY FROM?
A bios is *not* similer to adobe photoshop, nor is it the same as installing microsoft windows.
Who cares whether a computers bios is open source or not. He makes the point that it used to be considered hardware. Well, it wasn't actually, it was just on read only memory, otherwise known as non volotile memory. it was software then, and it's software now. Why he should slam it now when for decades it's been fine is a bit odd.
I'm sure that as soon as the GNU foundation becomes a pc developer they will use an open source bios, and good lucj to them. However they do not, as much as stallman likes to think otherwise, hold all the ethical high ground. They can't dictate to other companies and claim their products are unethical unless they actually have a fully working 'ethical' alternative. They don't.
I have a reasonable understanding of ethics, and curiously, the ethical status of a bios has never come up in a discussion.
This is exactly the kind of reasoning that got him excluded from the meeting where the term 'Open Source' was adopted. he was excluded because he can tend to be a bit fanatical. This is, I suspect, another example of that.
To be fair, Open Source projects aren't universally known for being paragons of interface elegance.
On the other hand, at least you can fix the interface of an Open Source project - unlike a closed one.
Skinnable BIOS, anyone ;-)
Paul "Say no to feeping creaturism"
TCPA is really an important issue - it has a model of "who's trusting whom to be allowed to do what" that's much different from mine, and while as a cryptographer there are times I want some somewhat similar capabiities, they've made too many wrong choices for me to trust a TCPA machine. They've occasionally hinted about not letting the machine boot without an "approved" OS - but as the owner of a machine, *I'm* the one who should be able to approve the OS, not the MPAA/RIAA/KGB.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
"Due to excessive bad posting from this IP or Subnet, anonymous comment posting has temporarily been disabled. You can still login to post. However, if bad posting continues from your IP or Subnet that privilege could be revoked as well. If it's you, consider this a chance to sit in the timeout corner or login and improve your posting . If it's someone else, this is a chance to hunt them down. If you think this is unfair, please email moderation@slashdot.org with your MD5'd IPID and SubnetID, which are " /. apparently uses their moderation system to censor anonyymous comments they find incorrect. And they track them by IP address. All the things people complain about here in regard to censorship and privacy are happening on this very site.
Vote for Pedro
Offhand, I can think of three strong arguments for an OpenBIOS.
- Decreased obsolence: As others have noted, changes in BIOS requirements can be responded to given the BIOS source. BIOS maintenance is no longer at the whim of the hardware vendor. This could extend the useful life of hardware.
- Decreased HW lockout: As others have noted, the move toward "Trusted Computing" could easily take a sinister turn. An open BIOS would make it much harder for hardware vendors to lock out libre software.
- Increased OS compatibility: Many seem concerned about getting hardware compatibility right in an open BIOS. The flip side of this is that getting the BIOS to work with an open OS would become much easier. The premiere example is ACPI, where the BIOS often has bugs with corresponding Windows workarounds.
I think the goal of producing an open BIOS that works well on a number of machines is quite a difficult one. The rewards of achieving it, however, seem high.I don't think many of the posters understand the there are serious attempts to put DRM in the BIOS. They will care when their computer refuses to play MP3 files (or any non-DRM format).
" I make over 80k a year getting paid to write software and design web service solutions,"
Great. Congrats. You make a living writing software.
But first of all, when you write custom solutions, you don't have to do anything with your code. And even if you GPL it, who cares? Your customers are paying for a solution, not for continued access to little bits of obvious code.
You're a programmer by profession, but it strikes me that you don't understand why you get paid.
The GPL is so simple that people refuse to believe it. You've explained it, but people think its magic...it doesn't allow them to do stuff with their code....
All the GPL says is that if a competitor makes use of your stuff, he has to give his stuff to you. An equitable trade. That's all. That's it.
I am a 45 year old computer professional, I've made a good living at computers for a long time, and I *get* why the FSF is important and good. And it works to everybody's advantage.
Today for example, we're seeing a wealth of low-price sophisticated gadgets that use Linux at their core.
We live in a funny age... one where MS, Sony, and other proprietary vendors are trying to lock down our future at the same time Stallman and Torvalds and many others are trying to keep our future free side.
I have no doubt free software will win, because it is simpler and better development model.
We have 3 postings linking to that debian/hurd port. One dated 09:20AM, one 09:31AM and the last 11:10AM. Guess what? The last is modded +1 Informative, the others -1 Redundant. So either some mods travels backwards through time, or "Here it is" is so much more informative than "here" oder "it's right here". Well, we are never going to know.
For sure, there is a danger in using clichés and stereotypes, but it is also true, that those clichés *DO* hold a lot of water. Actually, I can't say I know of any well-established cliché about the nature of a people, that didn't had some truth in it.
... which is why Europeans sport such excellent relations with their minority populations of Muslims, Africans, Turks, Jews. I am sure they all concur with your moronic statement. From your bigoted attitude alone I can tell you are a white Christian. I espect more from an enlightened European. Here in GDub's savage America we reject your silly notions.
an ill wind that blows no good
"If it's a choice between a stable, well-tweaked CLOSED BIOS and an unstable, lowest-common-performance-denominator OPEN BIOS, I'll pick the closed one"
Let me put it this way...
If its a choice between a slow, poorly documented, DRM laden CLOSED BIOS and a freely available, viewed by thousands all over the world OPEN BIOS, I'll pick the open one.
I mean, as long as we're going to present false choice, at least choose the truthful false choice.
I can't imagine RMS actually lowering himself to the heights of the rest of most users, and actually using an Intel box, so why would he care?
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
Couldn't you just adapt the license to your own needs, if it currently has some clauses you don't like?
Wait a minute... is the actual license subject to copyrights itself?
Heh... imagine getting sued for modifying a license without permission.
If I can't smoke and swear I'm fucked.
I used to, until a couple years ago, design hardware for a four-letter computer maker. I designed high-end desktops and laptops for them over the years I was employed by them. Every manufacturer has proprietary portions on their design that is value-added and allows themselves to differentiate from other makers. These "secret" parts are often required during boot. Case in point is how the Super I/O chip is set up or audio CODEC is implemented.
Not to mention that the hardware implementations are usually different. SMBUS lines are not always hooked up to the same chip. These same lines are used for configuring memory, system and bus clocks, configuring USB chipsets, and system monitoring. Otherwise, a computer is pretty generic and one pretty much like another.
Laptops are even worse about this. A while back, Intel tried to drive forward a generic laptop motherboard formfactor. It never took off since every manufacturer tries to distinguish itself by form factor, weight, and features. The agressive mechanical design of a laptop often drives how it is designed electrically.
BIOS update methods are obscured (security through obscurity) mainly so as to prevent crackers from reprogramming or even deleteing your BIOS. Reverse engineering this type of hardware security is A LOT more difficult than software types. It requires some rather sophisticated equipment. All said, the method is actually rather simple but can differ from maker-to-maker and machine-to-machine.
BIOS programmers usually work from a source tree and configure to particular machines. The source trees are bloated and filled with old code. Some old code is actually required for backwards compatibility and legacy.
Hey! Mr. Computer Maker! If you actually want to get away from legacy, then QUIT SHIPPING LEGACY DEVICES. My company just bought a bunch of desktops and you shipped them with PS/2 type keyboards and mice. Stop that. You'll never get rid of the legacy ports if you keep providing the devices that use them.
Since the value-add protions of the hardware are proprietary, no manufacturer is going to open source their value-added hardware and give advantage to those designers that come late to the table.
There are several ways to make an open source BIOS work:
1) Standardize the hardware interfaces to the critical components. That is, the or-else-it-won't-boot features such as memory configuration should always be in the same place. Corporate folks would still be able to implement their proprietary features but allow for the possibility of an open source BIOS. Creating a standard interface to critical components would require a standards body. The problem is that you would wind up paying for hardware you CAN'T use if you use an open source BIOS.
2) Create a generic GNU-type computer design with no value add features. All other features would be through add-in cards. This class of computer would be dirt cheap, truly bring computing to the masses, and be perfect for developing nations, education, and hardware hacking. Since schematics and BIOS source code would be available it might result in a renewed interest engineering akin to the early days of computing. Open Source design tools are already available.
In either case, there needs to be some form of security or authentication process to prevent the undesired alteration of a system's BIOS.
Documentation of many features of a PC type BIOS are available from various chipset manufacturers and SIGs. Intel has a stack of books for each CPU and chipset. SMBIOS is available freely. Super I/O chip manufacturers have plenty of documentation... for each SIO chip. PXE (BIS - Boot Integrity Services) is available online at Sourceforge. All we need is a standardized hardware interface to make it work generically.
> They refuse to release proper specs on their video chipsets in order to let
> X use the proper panel size on a laptop.
There's a patch out there that gets this working. Google for 1280patch. Yes, I work for a company that puts Linux on laptops. =)
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
Well I have only used one of the "bios" 's for Lynksis, it faird ok. What I'd like to know is why on earth do some of you hardcore linux folks have a alergy to 'for proffit' projects all the time? and what will you gain with a OSS compliant BIOS? If you dislike your IBM PC that much get a apple or sgi or something.
Slashdot has a bias toward stupid tech jokes in comments.
My other first post is car post.
GNU Emacs was started by Stallman. Previous versions emacs were "open source" and he welcomed additions from other people but that has nothing to do with GNU Emacs. You're going to have to start citing sources because otherwise it just looks like a lot of hot air.
As to LiGnuX, I do remember that, and what was it, a couple of lines in an Emacs changelog? (Which kind of conflicts with your assertion that Stallman had nothing to do with GNU Emacs). It's a silly name I agree, but it was never a serious suggestion and quite frankly he can call it what he likes. We are after all talking about the GNU system (the operating system he started) which just happens to use the Linux kernel.
As for "hero worship", I don't see it. It's simply giving the guy respect by not criticising over silly little things, which for some reason the pious Open Source crowd think is worth reminding everyone of every time his name's is bought up.
I could reciprocate the sentiment by suggesting that Linus usurped the GNU Operating System by renaming it Linux. But its not worth mentioning in the long run because as you say, it's just playing politics.
I think any professional BIOS writers in the crowd will laugh at the thought of an army of open source writers writing a stable BIOS. Because even they struggle to do it with all the registers in front of them!
Real BIOSes really do have microsoft-specific hacks to make things work at all. Real BIOSes seldom get such basic things as ECC correct. Real BIOSes do have to work around specific errata for every chip on every unique board. Yes, that includes different boot code for a revCG AMD CPU versus a revE AMD CPU.
And real BIOSes go through some amount of testing *before* going into the field.
When you open-source BIOS you will see less stability, less lab-testing and way too much bad field testing, and way too much guesswork since you won't have all the register fields given too you. It will be quite horrendous, even though you may get BIOS updates more frequently they will all suck.
I don't think the end user should be the target for this sort of thing -- I would think a company such as Dell or HP would profit most from OpenBios because it would not have to pay Phoenix or Ami money for a bios?
;)
The down side would be many companies would loose money (intel, Ami, Phoenix), the end user could see substantial gains and not have to worry about industry-levied "protective" technologies (such as non-certified OSes such as only being alowed to run windows for instance). I think the FSF needs to push the profit motive to Dell, HP, Gateway and company -- they would see the most substantial initial effect. I think it would be wrong to only do this for AMD as it would undermine the effort and OpenBios would never catch on.
Just a thought
How long until the Linux kernel starts complaining about a "tainted" BIOS.
Alan: "Determined that user running manufacturer's BIOS, user's bug report closed and rejected with prejudice."
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
When will it end? Open source is great, to an extent. But its becoming an annoying crusade as of late.
You might be a troll, but I wouldn't call your post "flamebait".
You aren't actually a programmer are you? I don't think you can understand what the GPL is about unless you are an individual creator (not just a modifier of other's work).
If we wish our art to take wing into the wider world, to perish or grow depending on its own merit, how can this be "communism"? It's the ultimate expression of capitalistic individuality, just as corporate-owned intellectual property is the ultimate expression of feudal serfdom.
Those of us who bear the divine fire of creativity should not be forced to lock up our creations in corporate vaults by you pathetic, souless drones.
Now, that was probably flamebait. But nonetheless true.
Oddly enough, for me it does. Right here in the good ol' US of A, too!
At first, I thought Stallman's use of "free" was just a disingenuous marketing term, designed to borrow the cachet of "freedom" for his particular ideal of software development.
Public domain software is truly free - GPL and other copyleft software still has restrictions.
But then I realized - what if you take "free software" to literally mean the same as is meant in the analogy:
"Free person is to Slave as Free software is to Proprietary software"
I.e. the code itself has rights! Information *truly*, anthorpomorphically, wanting/needing to be free!
Today, that seems nonsensical - but in 100 years, when we're all uploaded bits in the Matrix, it may be the principle that protects us!
BIOS simply stands for Basic Input Output System.
And PC simply stands for Personal Computer. Sure, a Mac mini is a personal computer, but is it a PC in the common sense of the word? You need to accept that in practice, the terms "PC" and "BIOS" have connotations beyond the simple expansions of the abbreviations.
...by following the instructions in the motherboard's manual. It said, "Be sure to connect to our website for any updates to the BIOS," so I very naively did so. At the time, I thought it was soooo nifty that I could download the update and copy it to a diskette that my new machine would boot from and automagically perform on itself. Of course, I also thought it was really nifty that I had managed to plug in all of the parts on the first try to produce a working machine!
Then I got a little nervous at the warnings that the update process couldn't be interrupted to avoid grave consequences. See, I didn't have a UPS, so I worried all through the update procedure.
Then it worked! There wasn't any discernible difference, though, and dang it if it still didn't recognize my drive. So I called Customer Support, and the polite woman asked, right off the bat, whether I'd flashed the BIOS. "Why, of course," I answered proudly, thinking I'd passed some kind of test that would otherwise have required me to admit that I hadn't, after which I'd have to call back, etc.
"Oh, I'm sorry, Sir. You've voided the support warranty. I'm afraid I can't help you."
Of course I started spluttering, and I even tried to deny that I had, but she was well-trained. And she already had the board's serial number.
Turned out I had a bad cable, anyway.
So I'm all for open-source BIOSes. And friendly support that charges a reasonable fee. And nice people everywhere. And the end of evil. And religious people who are also tolerant. And rainbows. And stuff that doesn't suck.
"Press to test."
(click)
"Release to detonate."
I'm a white agnostic.
I dunno what point you are trying to make, but you sure use few (none) arguments to make it.
Are you claiming your relations with Muslims are all that exellent, especially after 9/11? I think some thousands of Muslims whome were arrested without any charge may disagree. And I guess their are no racist attitudes anymore neither?
Yeah, right.
All people are prejudiced, including 'my' people, and denying that is the first problem. Once you realise that, you can begin adressing it. But ofcourse, there is an inherent difference between basing ones' viepoint on, say, the color of skin, which can not be held, and judging someone based on their actions. I would strongly combat the former, but I reserve the right to judge someone - including a country - according to their actions. I do it with my country, even.
But where do that bring us in regard to the clichés? Exactly on the same spot as what I said earlier: a lot of clichés have a grain of truth in it, yet the danger lies in making it absolute. Someone denying the first is an idiot and denying the latter makes him a dangerous fool. You seem to invoke a racist or religious background for it, where there is none: I wasn't speaking about other 'races' (which is a misnomer to begin with). but there are cultural differences, even among 'whites', and, while clichés don't give a clear picture of any of them, the more general and persistant ones, DO have something of truth in it. (Take the German 'Punktlichkeit'; do you think this is purely imagined or biased? Forget it; it actually describes the mentality in this regard of most germans.)
Anyway, you are happily using terms like 'moronic' and 'bigoted attitude', but your conclusion is false, and I sincerely hope you reject my 'silly notions' out of better grounds then you just posted.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
After reading several dozen comments, one common theme I keep reading is about the corporate survival structure. In the field of technology, the corporations have constantly done business with none other than the mean ol' government system. IF it wasn't for them, many of these name brand company's would not have made it through the Reagonomics era. What I'm saying is not that radical either. Then again, I understand; some of you are libitarian capitalist who despise the present system and its authoritarian structure, so I'll skip over the university research department like MIT and... ah whatever - do what you will.
"We've got Intel giving us more and more specs all the time and then RMS comes along and yells at them."
I've yet to hear RMS yell at anyone. If you're detecting a raised voice through his writings (as a lot of blind Linus-worshipping Slashdot posters seem to do), may I suggest that you see a psychiatrist. The loud voice in your head isn't that of RMS but of your own demons.
And please stop pedelling the nonsense and hair-splitting over "author" and "inventor". I remember all this the first time around and unless you can link to some heretofore unknown information that proves RMS didn't write GNU Emacs then I suggest that you quitely go away.
Note to RSM: Here's a motherboard. The bios can be flashed onto it. Nobody is preventing you from writing a bios for it, so quit pontificating and screeching, and write the @#$#(*&%@ thing if you want it! Isn't that what open source is all about, after all?
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Free Computers!
Free, open factories! ... People must be permitted to BUILD THEIR OWN COMPUTERS ... In their own FACTORIES -- how, after all, can we trust that malicious code wasn't inserted into the hardware boards? We must have the right to melt down our own sand! The molecules could be corrupted!
Oh. Wait... Never mind....
(and for the humor impaired, I run Gentoo and Debian servers at work with a Win2000 Domain Server -- I believe in coexistance.)
- it just isn't "quite" free. AFAIK, both
SUN Microsystems and Apple use OpenBIOS. Each
of these vendors, of course, use a different
implimentation which is at least partially
dependent upon the hardware supported. In each
case, it is possible to modify boot parameters
in a (more or less) English readable format, at
the boot console level. At the core of OpenBIOS
(OpenBOOT) is a Forth language bootstrap, which
by definition is extensible. (Various Forth
gurus state that the entire Forth language can
be built from 13 or 15 core commands.) It is
quite possible to extend the OpenBIOS/BOOT core
to support new hardware not envisioned during
OEM R&D.
Given the memory densities currently available,
there is no reason why any system board or chip
level manufacturer, including Intel, could not
offer their customers the flexibility of OpenBIOS.
IMHO, it really boils down to greed of certain
manufacturers - closed source and closed APIs
results in more new motherboard sales. This is
no different, really, than software OEMs that
push upgrades on their customers in leu of the
patches needed to fix bugs and vulnerabilities.
If I were shopping for an OEM system board for
any project that required long term support (like
aviation, spaceflight, military, financial), I
would tend to favor a hardware platform that had
the flexibility and extensibility of OpenBIOS.
Take the IO out of BIOS?
:-P
BS!
"Thus when you take somebody else's hard work that they have put under the GPL - then you have to abide by their terms. However, that does not stop you from approaching them asking for a closed source license or "commercial" to their code. The reason they can do that is because THEY RETAIN COPYRIGHT TO THEIR CODE [AND THEY RETAIN COPYRIGHT TO YOUR DERIVED CODE.]"
However, you're diminishing the GPL's goals and values by relicensing your code under proprietary terms. You may use any non Free license, or even an EULA, to achieve your relicensing goal. Hence, you don't need the GPL to protect anyone's Freedom because you're the one circumventing GPL's so called Freedom protection. A tried and true Free license doesn't need nor require relicensing. The BSD license and similars are truly Free.
You and your mods are full of common misconceptions that you probably think Linux is a complete operating system by itself.
I must say, I find that option a bit crazy. You have a very powerful CPU, doing nothing immediately after power-on... You might as well run the firmware on it to initalize the boot devices. What advantage do you even get from having it running on a seperate CPU? It can't possibly be worth the extra cost and added complexity to a PC.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
"'World Stage' is a term used by European actors (particularly the French) who see international relations as some kind of parlor game."
This would denote the statement that most americans are clueless (etc), how, exactly? Whether "world stage" is a french term or not, what has that to do with it?
"In the US we are quite mindful of how we are percieved."
Actually, most don't bother, because, after all, the usa is "the greatest country in the world" and when push comes to shove, no other country (nor the perception of their foreign populace) really matters, right? Those that are more mindful and care about the views abroad, are by defintion going to be the more cosmopolitan in nature. I doubt many rednecks lay awake at night contemplating the negative view those pesky French and German people have of them.
"We just don't feel that negative perception is justified or that it is worth trading security for."
No doubt you feel it's not justified. That's why I respect the USA-individuals I spoke of earlier, because, against all odds (national-zealot reflex and all that), they DO realise that the negative perception is largely justified.
And you make a false argument by making it a diametrically oposed position; it's not OR having a positive perception and being unsafe OR having a negative perception and gaining security. That thought is absurd, and exactly shows the mentality that is resented in much of the rest of the world. Do you *actually* believe that you have to trade the one for the other, or are you only pretending to be as daft because you feel the 'euro-dudes are attacking my country again'?
There is no connection, let alone a causality between improving the perception abroad and security, and if there is one, it would be that security gets better if your relations abroad get better too, won't you think?
But, no, according to you it's not worth 'trading' security for. Only civil liberties are worth trading for it, it seems.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
Sheesh. Some people.
Reverse-engineering is legal in the U.S., check out Sony v. Connectix. They reverse-engineered the Playstation bios to create an emulator on the computer and Sony took them to court and lost. They were copying the Sony bios into their emulator and even using parts of Sony's bios to debug their own and while designing their own. A lot of it had to do with the work beingn the bios, whose operation was mostly utilitarian to support the hardware.
Here's a little reading for you.
Sheesh. Some people. ;)
Please post the source to the Linux kernel in a comment here right now, or it's not open!!11!!
http://www.google.com/search?q=GPL+exception
Wikileaks, no DNS