AMD To Support Coreboot On All Future CPUs

[AlbertP]

BIOS companies, universally, produce nothing but shit. BIOS are horrible programs. Bloated, terribly written, slow, unreliable, and cause all sorts of horrible problems with Linux. Nothing but shit. Almost every single one.

A lot of shit actually comes from the motherboard vendors. AMI BIOS as a company is making good software (even though it's proprietary), but manufacturers misuse the flexibility AMI offers to mess up things. Manufacturers like to add their own stuff, BIOS vendors have no choice but to offer flexibility.
Asus's implementation of their BIOS on the P4P800 SE board is shit. It's called CrashFree but the BIOS Setup program often locks up. And the IRQ and PnP configuration module is still a legacy from the ISA age - the Linux kernel even includes a hack to get rid of the crazy PnP stuff on this board. A good motherboard vendor would have removed this feature on boards without ISA slots. And the default BIOS POST screen, a fullscreen image, is ugly, you can only replace it with some proprietary Windows program.
Asrock have done it better on the K7S41GX, my previous board, but the default settings of the BIOS are still horrible at times (the defaults greatly differ between BIOS versions, which makes clear that Asrock is messing up a lot). This board clearly tells about wrongly connected cables, wrong jumper settings, etc. when they might cause boot failures and it does not feel slow or bloated.
And what about Gigabyte + ASPM? There are lots of Phoenix or Award BIOSes without ASPM problems.

[f1r31c3r]

sweet

Greed is still very much a driving force in Open Source Software. To be very blunt about this, They're not writing software FOR YOU, they are writing it for themselves. It's their itch that they're scratching, there's nothing altruistic about it other than that they're giving out the solution for free. And on the other side there's actually very good greed based incentives for them to develop and open source code: Free Development, Free Bugtesting, etc...

wow very good super high quality reply, quite inspirational too.

agreed, but let's take it one step further, kids should be taught from a young age in school how to program with a large focus on how they can incorporate their various subjects into programs, teach them this skill and make it fun and you'll have a generation of intelligent, logical people who actually know what they were taught as opposed to being trained to be intellectual slaves for the state where Ethos and some pathos based arguments are the only ones you can use to get people anywhere instead of them balking and ignoring any and all logos based appeals.

I been saying this for years I know one thing is for certain it is on my adgenda to teach my kids like this. It should have happened at the turn of the century which makes me wounder if its a deliberate effort to turn our youngsters into consumers only. Conspiracy theories again lol

[Luke_Wolf]

Why should they re-licence the idea of open source is that you have the ability to use software without limits.

While I agree with this sentiment of the post I'm going to have to tear into other parts for their foolishness

Currently the Linux kernel has over 1 billion developers thats insane, something no comercial company will ever achive, ever. So your sharing the code with the world makes you one of them great developers in the building block to the most powerfull amazing software on the planet. Its not about money the software runs your systems to make you money in whatever it is you do. That means the mony maker is not developing bios software is it.

How many of those Developers are employed by companies such as Red Hat and Novell/Attachmate? If I'm remembering the chart that broke down contributions it's at least half, though I think it was more. We need these companies because fixing up infrastructure and optimizing things isn't happy fun work. The community provides the mass majority of the innovation but the grunt work is provided by the companies.

Closing of the source code is just a Nazi fascist capitalistic greedy and darn right distructive policy. Just like intelectual property protection which limits the worlds ability to progress. Placing control of one technology only in the hands of one company clearly restrics development of the technology.

Actually no that's not capitalism at all, it is that plague called Keynesianism aka Corporatism which is completely different from capitalism but the government and media and such like to pretend that it is capitalism. Keynsianism is actually a strain of Socialism.

Let's take a moment to actually define our terms here:

Keynsianism: The Economic Theory that government involvement in regulating businesses (including creating monopolies via Intellectual property) and creating massive debts helps the economy.

Capitalism: The Economic Theory that there should be NO government involvement whatsoever and that the market will naturally tend towards stability, lower prices and higher quality hinged upon that lack of involvement. (Note that this means such things as Intellectual Property are completely counter to the concept of Capitalism)

Thats why open source matters. We are human and a good person is one who actually gives to receive. A taker taker taker is as above a Hitler. We have moved on from this greedy way and i hope mony large organisations that still live this greedy sense start giveing to recieve too. The world would be a much better place if we would all work together as a team. utilise each persons skills and build a better world. Star Trek is coming lol.

Greed is still very much a driving force in Open Source Software. To be very blunt about this, They're not writing software FOR YOU, they are writing it for themselves. It's their itch that they're scratching, there's nothing altruistic about it other than that they're giving out the solution for free. And on the other side there's actually very good greed based incentives for them to develop and open source code: Free Development, Free Bugtesting, etc...

Now to be clear there are actually 3 levels of labor ordered by level of quality: Passion, Greed, and Slavery. Passion obviously is someone being highly interested in something and enjoying it e.g. being passionate about it, such people are difficult to find in any one area however from a labor perspective they provide the best quality and quantity as they're going to go out of their way to do extra. Then there is greed, greed is a factor that effects most people, they want to gain resources and move up. Greed can be tricky to wield because there is a curve involved between where one becomes either the supplier or consumer, one always wants to be the consumer because the supplier is always going to be screwed over. this is true of job markets and everything else. Finally we have slavery, slavery involving people who are doing something they don't want to is naturally going to result in the lowest quality products, most of which are probably not going to pass any sort of real QA protocol, it is however arguably the cheapest form of labor, although robotics in reality is the cheaper alternative. To put it very bluntly slavery is crap labor, however this is the kind of labor currently supporting most manufacturing in this day and age and is the preferred labor form of Dictators and Communists (capital C).

True Capitalism by being a completely free flowing system without the shackles of government involvement will tend to keep everything on the small scale, because businesses cannot just wield the government against each other thus creating their monopolies (like how Mosanto did to our farming industries). This thus keeps everything more towards the passion end of the labor scale because everything remains small enough that the power structures don't begin to swing the other way. Keynsianism however supports governments shackling the economy, and putting the businesses that pay the most into it's pockets to reach the top, while focusing only on the greed aspect. Obviously as things become more consolidated it reaches towards the slavery end of the stick, only prevented from going all the way because they can't just keep you there. This is true for both govenrment and corporate consolidation.

So why should any powerfull open source software like coreboot re-licence. Lets make the world a better place and get rid of capitalistic nazi fascism.

Keynsianism, Please..

Open Source really does matter, teach all our kids how to program in a real world and not M$ API's.

agreed, but let's take it one step further, kids should be taught from a young age in school how to program with a large focus on how they can incorporate their various subjects into programs, teach them this skill and make it fun and you'll have a generation of intelligent, logical people who actually know what they were taught as opposed to being trained to be intellectual slaves for the state where Ethos and some pathos based arguments are the only ones you can use to get people anywhere instead of them balking and ignoring any and all logos based appeals.

[f1r31c3r]

Yes

Would a licence be possible that allows manufacturers to add proprietary extras to the open Coreboot?

Its used allot especially by graphics card companies like ATI and Nvidia there called binary drivers there a encrypted binary and work like a plugin. Coreboot can be instructed to execute them at the users discretion.

The kernel has this same thing with graphics firmware as well as the intel microcode.

Proprietary binaries are very common in linux and coreboot is based on the same code as the linux kernel so that you can just pull drivers out the kernel and drop them strait into coreboot.

You can put in the firmware code prior to compiling coreboot and it will incorporate the binay/firmware in your rom image if you really wanted to. Best thing is that it gives the user the choice to use it or not.

There is a security issue though as these binary files can be untrustud or malicious code could exist in them and you have no way of knowing. Thats the choice you can take though. If the code is proprietary eg from a know manufacturer i.e. the mainboard manufacturer i guess you could trust it a bit more to compile it into your boot rom.

So yes and no additional licence is needed.

[AlbertP]

Would a licence be possible that allows manufacturers to add proprietary extras to the open Coreboot?

[f1r31c3r]

but why

Many MB manufacturers pimp their "exclusive" BIOS features. Whether or not they are truly exclusive is another point, but if you told your president that you could switch to this fancy new system but you'd have to give away all the "exclusive" code that you wrote, who would do that? Coreboot has to re-license, even if it's seemingly stupid.

Why should they re-licence the idea of open source is that you have the ability to use software without limits.

Your given the entire base code to start with, a working entire suit open unincrypted open source to allow any developer to make it there own. The small price is to have the curtusy and dignity to share that code so others can use it and enjoy in a non comercial manour. For instance taking coreboot then selling it is out of order. The idea is freedom to share, after all you got the initial code for free so its cost is contributing to the project. If you have a development team of 5 people who advance the software to a new level you then contribute it, others can freely debug this code and further advance it.

Currently the Linux kernel has over 1 billion developers thats insane, something no comercial company will ever achive, ever. So your sharing the code with the world makes you one of them great developers in the building block to the most powerfull amazing software on the planet. Its not about money the software runs your systems to make you money in whatever it is you do. That means the mony maker is not developing bios software is it.

When another developer like me or any others who contribute add new code, you would benefit these features as well for free without cost so its a small price to pay when you make a small contribution to the evolution of open source. Closing of the source code is just a Nazi fascist capitalistic greedy and darn right distructive policy. Just like intelectual property protection which limits the worlds ability to progress. Placing control of one technology only in the hands of one company clearly restrics development of the technology.

Thats why open source matters. We are human and a good person is one who actually gives to receive. A taker taker taker is as above a Hitler. We have moved on from this greedy way and i hope mony large organisations that still live this greedy sense start giveing to recieve too. The world would be a much better place if we would all work together as a team. utilise each persons skills and build a better world. Star Trek is coming lol.

The reduction of software costs in any company is a huge one, think about it if you did not have to pay for that massive M$ licences you would save a fortune. All you would pay for is the tech guys which you pay for at present anyway as well as the licence so by contributing to open source you romeve licence cost and only pay the tech guys, now thats a much cheaper incredibly powerfull option. far greater than betting that M$ going to keep your system secure, it takes 3 months for M$ to fix known problems now thats costing you money in any business lol.

So why should any powerfull open source software like coreboot re-licence. Lets make the world a better place and get rid of capitalistic nazi fascism.

Open Source really does matter, teach all our kids how to program in a real world and not M$ API's.

[drag]

Most of the features of a modern BIOS are useless* anyways.

BIOS companies, universally, produce nothing but shit. BIOS are horrible programs. Bloated, terribly written, slow, unreliable, and cause all sorts of horrible problems with Linux. Nothing but shit. Almost every single one.

EFI is going to be better... but it's terribly designed. Over engineered horrific mismatch of 'this sounds cool' design-by-committee mishmash. A terrible abortion brought to you by megalomanics from from Intel and Microsoft.

EFI
* Has it's own shell.
* Requires a built-in EBC interpreter

If that gives you any idea of it.

It's like ACPI, except much more.

What we really want is our operating system to control the hardware. No matter what EFI or BIOS does to setup the hardware it will have to be re-done by the kernel anyways. In fact it makes things worse because not only you have to setup the hardware correctly, you have to figure out in what stupid brain-dead thing the BIOS did to break it.

Coreboot has the advantage that you by-pass all that stuff and just have Linux configure it the way it should be right off the bat. Linux needs to work on the hardware anyways. So getting Linux to work means that you are getting Coreboot to work.

For systems that want to still see a BIOS coreboot can throw a fake one at them, like SeaBIOS.

Unfortunately the worst thing against Coreboot is that it's not going to be liked by Microsoft and friends. So always using Coreboot means extra work.

[Nobu]

Given that a chicken grows from an egg; the egg was there first.

That assumes that the first chicken hatched from an egg. If it in fact was the result of a mutation of an animal which didn't hatch from an egg, then it could be said that the chicken came first. I find that unlikely though; for that to have happened, the chicken's ancestor would have to had not hatched from an egg. I suspect that is not the case, but I don't know for sure. :/

I agree that it's a catch 22.

[V!NCENT]

It's a chicken and egg problem.

No, it's a catch-22.

Considder evolution, where you draw the line between species based on DNA. At some point one declares "From this DNA on, it's a chicken.". Given that a chicken grows from an egg; the egg was there first.

[yogi_berra]

It takes 8 minutes from password entry to a workable desktop.

But you have to admit that this is a nice feature to have, which is why RHEL has copied it for 6.x. 10 minutes from power button to a functioning desktop gives you an extra break in the morning, right when you need it most.