Canoeboot 20231026 Released As Another Fork Of Coreboot-Downstream Libreboot

[Draget]

I really openly support and am very happy about existing forks of projects that try to avoid binary blobs, un-reviewed code and potential freedom impairing components.

While I understand how some people find it pointless to have a potentially less-working version just because of some freedom believe, there is the ability to 'just not give a fuck' and stick with the upstream project. Perfectly fine with me. And people who do care, can have an option and help pushing the idea of open source even further down to the tiniest binary blobs.

But my preferred way is to have a project that closely follows upstream, merging changes into their version and basically just keeping a patchset/branch of removed blobs and functions. Porting those to each and every release might be difficult, so some delays are expected. And it should clearly distinguish itself from the upstream project, not confusing users.

But that stupid mess they built up there is just frustrating! I honestly hope that some people who were responsible for coming up with names similar to other projects, not clearly drawing a line, read this: You drive nails into the very believe you are working for! Messing up other project, even with mocking names, causes user frustration and confusion. Get you shit together or leave this community alone, really.
I know it is not always black and white and sometimes these disagreements even come so far that one part of the developers think 'they are the real project' (BTC vs BTH, ffmpeg vs libav, HackMd vs CodiMd etc.) and want to take the name with them. But if you want to do something actually good for the users, you put personal shit aside, come to an agreement and make clean cuts (or develop a way to integrate… why not have one "boot project that hosts different spins that collaborate with different rules on what they accept and what not?"

Sorry for the rant…

[skeevy420]

Now we have finally "canoeboot" which is effectively renaming of non-GeNUine boot, which is the rename of "unofficial" GNU boot, which is just libreboot with the GNU boot policy, and entirely exists to make GNU boot effort unneeded. If you listen to GNU's pronunciation ( https://www.gnu.org/gnu/pronunciation.en.html ) it's pronounced "gah-new", which rhymes with canoe. I don't think that's a coincidence at all.

It's pronounced gə-,nü

gah-new sounds like a variation of Klingon gagh. We will feast on gagh'new before battle. Today is a good day to die.

[George99]

We are getting nearer to the point of singularity with more variants of Coreboot than supported mainboards.

[Britoid]

Just going to add even more confusion to the how GNU Boot/LibreBoot/CoreBoot which will make it harder for users and potential contributors.

[Old Grouch]

Thank you for writing up your 30 minutes. It would have taken me longer.

[fitzie]

I've done a bit of research of this situation, and there's a bunch of the history I will not get into here that I think is interesting, but the big beats are:

linuxbios: in the beginning it was bits of the linux kernel made to work in a prebios situation
coreboot: as it became clear that this environment would have to be a hard fork of whatever linux code they used, they renamed themselves to make it clear they are on their own path now.
libreboot: largely just a distribution of coreboot, but they did create a new build system and several reverse engineered components to remove some binary blobs, this was an official GNU project, but no longer is. As a GNU project they had a strict no binaries policy, that even disallowed cpu microcode firmware.
osboot: a "fork" of libreboot with more liberal policies for what binary blobs would be allowed. this was done by the maintainers of libreboot, and after two years was folded back in to libreboot, and at that time libreboot's policy towards binary blobs became more lax.

That was the history now begins this current situation:

GNU boot: GNU decides to create a corebios distribution that is more strict again, using libreboot as a starting point. This is just created earlier this summer.

"unofficial" GNU boot -> non-GeNUine boot: libreboot maintainers catch wind of the GNU effort, and attempts to cut them off, creating a new fork of libreboot using GNU's policy. Because it was called GNU boot (with the "unofficial" label), the GNU project though that would create confusion and asked them to stop, hence the rename to non-GeNUine boot.

Now we have finally "canoeboot" which is effectively renaming of non-GeNUine boot, which is the rename of "unofficial" GNU boot, which is just libreboot with the GNU boot policy, and entirely exists to make GNU boot effort unneeded. If you listen to GNU's pronunciation ( https://www.gnu.org/gnu/pronunciation.en.html ) it's pronounced "gah-new", which rhymes with canoe. I don't think that's a coincidence at all.

Therefore, I think I've learned nothing of value in the 30 minutes it took me to understand this all, and I want that time back so desperately. I've written this up so you don't waste any more time then it takes to read this, and perhaps my suffering wasn't a total loss.

--
After writing this I reread the article Michael wrote and can see you can see most of this story in his article however it misses the details that this was all in response to a real (not "unofficial") GNU boot, and the fact that these are not just config options is due to GNU preferences to not hosting any of the bad binary blobs even in git. As well as the history around how the binary policies in these projects were shaped by its connection to FSF and the osboot defork a while back.

[timofonic]

ForkBoot hell...

[OneTimeShot]

I don't think anything other than CoreBoot is needed. Maybe someone can add build variables to disable stuff if they are worried about "how free it is".

It's not like you can install CoreBoot *and* LibreBoot/CanoeBoot on a system at the same time.

[mos87]

In general, the concept of limiting functionality by purging software in the name of free-ness is daft. How are you gonna promote Free Software if you restrict it to a smaller number of users?
While in this particular case it also carries the problems of ego, mental health (or lack thereof), activism (in a sad, hijacked sense), etc..

[justinkb]

Fork bomb