Canoeboot 20231026 Released As Another Fork Of Coreboot-Downstream Libreboot

[blackiwid]

A bit like some crazy EX that finds out that you have a new girlfriend and makes you a scene about it in a restaurant or before your door, that is the vibes I get from this.

[blackiwid]

Leah eventually came to agree with this point of view and now works towards that with Libreboot, creating a distribution that (somewhat sophisticated) end-users can hopefully rely on (more than they can rely on coreboot being end-user friendly at any particular commit) and which defaults to "Libre" where possible (e.g. libgfxinit vs vgabios).

Yes conveniently she released her "GNU Boot" under their name in a few days before they launched their project/website. So it was not just a independent enlightenment of what is good, it was a reaction to competition. She could have done this months before they did that, but just "randomly" the timing nearly 1:1 overlaps with their release... yeah sure...

I get there the picture in my head of some manipulative parter in a relationship that get rejected for sex and then keeps trying to blame the person for not giving it up and tries to paint them to others or make them feel they are in the wrong.

There is lot's of bad blood between this 2 groups, and the best is to go into the mode of coexisting and letting each other in peace, but she has to bully them and try to control everything. So I get a lot of Cluster A or B vibes, am not a medical professional therefor I can make this layman partially polemic speech.

Since GNU Boot never quite took off (how long are they preparing things now?), there's now something she maintains that they could use it to base their work on. Or not. That's up to the GNU Boot folks.

Only mental people after they got a clear NO from somebody, after previous legal / personal fights, and now again a letter with

Generally speaking, Leah seems (to me) to be the type who prefers GPL-style software freedom (even if she dissociated herself from GNU/FSF fully over other matters). As such, this might well be an attempt to get this off the ground for the people who prefer such a model

For that no website would be needed, and not the attempt to steel the name, it's clearly not about that but something evil instead. Is it possible that she maybe wants both, do something good and attack them aggressively at the same time but that would suggest some mental problems again.

But yeah, given all the bad blood over various stunts in the past, I can't help but see some trolling, but it seems to be more of a side dish and not the main course.

People like trolling, that is a bias, the Internet loves trolls, often including me, but there is a level where somebody goes nuclear and completely crazy. Like somebody writing a trollish comment somewhere vs a stalker that is obsessed with the target, I see more towards the latter.

We should not support that because our bias towards trolling.

For me that feels like a control freak that can't just "agree to disagree" and move on, but instead have to have always the last word.

[ayumu]

x86 (and ARM) seem a hopeless mess of bespoke garbage.

Meanwhile in RISC-V, boot process is standardized in specifications like the SBI, and all SBCs seem to use u-boot SPL then opensbi then u-boot or the open uefi implementation.

[pgeorgi]

I can't see any other reason, to make that effort to push a fork with a version and license that you 100% disagree on. She does believe that the GNU's definition of freedom is less positive, so it can't be to promote that project as better version to her main project.

I see a trollish aspect in this new project (the name... *groan*), but I'm not sure if that's an accurate assessment of Leah's position regarding licensing and freedom.

For example, RMS stated that BSD licensing is advantageous in some cases (like for Ogg Vorbis).

Some folks in the coreboot community (including me) felt that a firmware project that supports only hardware that is older than some of the contributors to coreboot is detrimental to the goal of opening up the firmware landscape, and so we decided to compromise grudgingly (but that willingness to compromise is not unlimited, as Intel recently learned). When libreboot first started, we were discussing what we could do to help them, and we spun out the blobs in a separate repo and put in a bunch of flags in the build system to allow a "one-stop shop" no-blobs build.

Leah eventually came to agree with this point of view and now works towards that with Libreboot, creating a distribution that (somewhat sophisticated) end-users can hopefully rely on (more than they can rely on coreboot being end-user friendly at any particular commit) and which defaults to "Libre" where possible (e.g. libgfxinit vs vgabios). Since GNU Boot never quite took off (how long are they preparing things now?), there's now something she maintains that they could use it to base their work on. Or not. That's up to the GNU Boot folks.

Generally speaking, Leah seems (to me) to be the type who prefers GPL-style software freedom (even if she dissociated herself from GNU/FSF fully over other matters). As such, this might well be an attempt to get this off the ground for the people who prefer such a model, even if it limits the reach of that project. Just like coreboot accomodated the original Libreboot even though we disagreed that all open source firmware should restrict itself in that way.

But yeah, given all the bad blood over various stunts in the past, I can't help but see some trolling, but it seems to be more of a side dish and not the main course.

[phoron]

Careful each one with one's own deep hatred. Let's don't talk about other people health issues, which we neither know nor need to know.

I don't know. I thank @fritzie for the explanation, I understand how as an outsider as myself it can feel frustrating, but I also understand human relations may be complex and keeping projects synchronized and goals aligned is not that easy. The hoarders only have to discuss about the size of their piece of the pie, but those fighting for any values are always subject to disagreements and schisms.

This situation may be less that straightforward, but is not the end of the world, and I blame it on hardware vendors who refuse to document and free their firmware, not on citizens trying to help themselves and their neighbours work around abusive circumstances.

[blackiwid]

Well I have to be careful around the person that doing that, but I try to be as diplomatic as possible the rates of mental illnesses around this condition she has, is high.

Why do I say that, because she releases a fork with a website a own, not just a other version with a different name on her main website, to conquer to divide.

I can't see any other reason, to make that effort to push a fork with a version and license that you 100% disagree on. She does believe that the GNU's definition of freedom is less positive, so it can't be to promote that project as better version to her main project.

Probably to keep the state before GNU Boot was out or because of petty revenge because of the attack on her attempt to steel the name GNU/Boot another extremely aggressive and even probably illegal therefor she backed out of it and claimed it was a joke. This doubling down proofs to me that it was not "just a joke".

She likes the confusion, many people including me linked libreboot or libre with a GNU project with the GNU definition of freedom. So depending on how you wanna take it completely free of blobs or in a way that they are considered harmless / defacto-hardware or stuff like that.

Even I read the story if you then months later read that your notebook is suddenly supported you forget about that.

I think she wants that, to this day I don't even understand what the licensing disagreements are with Coreboot or if she is just not able to work with them and needs therefor her own project.

She goes out of her way similar to something Nvidia would do or other nice companies, to attack the brand before it get's established first by trying to steel the name then by adding more names and websites out there, so that people that are not deep into that project never figure out what it is and fall for ohh this cool libreproject with the nice features must be the GNU project.

And yes for such acting there are 2 ways of seeing that either some DSM diagnoses or not yet diagnoses or being a hyper competitive ashole that knows no limits to win some battles with their elbows.

But because this is something supposed to be good like funding food for some poor country, it's a good cause it's like try to make competition with some human rights organization that wants to build hospitals in some poor countries.

I mean this is the 3rd fight over the naming:
1. taking the naming with them against the will of the GNU Project, they gave it to her after a while, somebody normal would take that as win and move on.
2. her attempt to copy their new name.
3. making another fork with a similar name and a own website despite disagreeing with the values behind this fork.

[Developer12]

16 comments and counting and nobody's realized this is just Leah clowning on the GNU libre software chumps. Libreboot no longer adheres the the FSF's braindead RYF policies and so a bunch of people decided to (incompetently) make their own fork of an old copy of libreboot. Leah clowned on them by making an actually-competent version but got hatemail for using the same name, so this is that competent version released under a new name.

[fitzie]

This claim that Rowe's GNU Boot served to undercut GNU developers needs to substantiated. As I understand it, Rowe's unofficial GNU Boot release would have allowed GNU developers to officialize it under the actual GNU umbrella, without the need to fork it, as it would have been a Libreboot downstream. In other words, Rowe appeared to be okay with GNU having its own GNU Boot, and wanted to gift GNU a properly maintained downstream. This was in response to GNU developers creating another, conflicting Libreboot (dot at) when Rowe's version became non-libre.
Now, GNU developers supposedly perceived it as an affront, and are going their own way (?). Canoeboot is Rowe's response for those who want a libre version still deriving from her Libreboot.
All relevant links seem to be condensed in the first paragraph at this page.
Yes, this is becoming increasingly hard to follow and increasingly silly as well.

I specifically don't want to get into the personalities and drama of the history. I didn't say "undercut" but said "cut them off" which I thought was more neutral.

But for those wanted to understand why I still support that, is because:

1) all these efforts were done by the libreboot maintainers in reaction GNU boot
2) the first writeup about gnuboot here (not the sanitized version on canoeboot.org) https://libreboot.org/news/gnuboot.html
3) The fact that this effort was not adopted by GNU boot, yet this "fork" continues to exist.

I'm not going to quote the libreboot maintainers, because is touching upon the parts of the history I said in my original comment I will not discuss, so I effectively concede the debate, but people can look at the link I provided. Sadly you may find yourself in the same regret as I did.

As for the libreboot.at domain, this was a fork of the libreboot project from the point it was last free and was the site they created when they announced the plan to start working on a libre version of coreboot again. However, this domain is just a stale representation of libreboot from that point in time two years ago, and the GNU boot project never used that domain for their effort. I don't see any evidence there was any release of a forked image under the libreboot.at domain, and that it was just the first step to revive a free coreboot distribution from the most recent starting point. By the time "unofficial" GNU /non-GeNUine boot was announced, GNU boot was clearly the brand of this effort, and had zero connection to the libreboot.at domain.

But I stand by my contention that no one wins by looking into this further. accept your fate all who digs into this rabbit hole.

[chocolate]

"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.

This claim that Rowe's GNU Boot served to undercut GNU developers needs to substantiated. As I understand it, Rowe's unofficial GNU Boot release would have allowed GNU developers to officialize it under the actual GNU umbrella, without the need to fork it, as it would have been a Libreboot downstream. In other words, Rowe appeared to be okay with GNU having its own GNU Boot, and wanted to gift GNU a properly maintained downstream. This was in response to GNU developers creating another, conflicting Libreboot (dot at) when Rowe's version became non-libre.
Now, GNU developers supposedly perceived it as an affront, and are going their own way (?). Canoeboot is Rowe's response for those who want a libre version still deriving from her Libreboot.
All relevant links seem to be condensed in the first paragraph at this page.
Yes, this is becoming increasingly hard to follow and increasingly silly as well.

[jindam]

* anyone or everyone create fork_ no issues
* most important_
* upstream as much as possible
* not interested anymore, merge into existing fork or other fork, but **dont** abandon