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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?
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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..
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.
Agreed wholeheartedly. I've been around the man a few times, and the image most people have in thier minds about him is way off.
His problem is that he's not the most social creature around, so he tends to come off poorly due to his social ineptitude. Take his speech about free documentation at the O'Reilly conference. While it is very nice (and appreciated) that they're releasing awesome manuals, it's not free for all to use. This threatens Free Documentation -- Since there's these non-free manuals that rock (bought a few of 'em myself), people will be less inclinded to write good Free (speech) documentation, which the movement is in dire need of.
RMS was 1010% correct. However, he told it at the worst possible moment in the most outright manner possible, so he came off as a jerk.
Listen to his words. Watch his actions. But try to ignore how he presents the former. He just doesn't know people all that well.
It hasn't been done yet (to my knowledge) but that shouldn't stop you right?
Reading your text I think you have a few misconceptions on what Open Firmware is and which features it provides. I suggest reading this very insightful introduction.
If you are an embedded systems engineer, what do you think about alternate approaches like Tinyboot?
Code is Speech. No to Censorship.
How does something that directly contradicts reality get modded insightful ?
The current scarecrow to throw at your enemies is terrorism, not communism. Please follow your times.
Also, if you meant that shared ownership implies communism, it logically follows that any company with more than one shareholder is communistic.
AFAIK most open source projects are (or at least started as) the work of people, not corporations.
Um, isn't this exactly what the company releasing its code would want ? That anyone who distributes products based on the code must release any enhancments to the code under GPL as well ?
You do realize that just because you, the original author and copyright holder, released version 1.0 under the GPL, doesn't mean you that you are under any obligation to release version 1.0.1 under any license - assuming, of course, that you own the copyrights to all the code in version 1.0.1 ? Licenses are used togrant rights, under certain terms, to people who don't have the copyright to whatever is being licensed.
Or were you bemoaning over companies inability to take GPL'd code, add some features, and sell the result as their own proprietary product ? If so, keep on lamenting; you won't get any sympathy from me.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
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.