"100% Free" GNU Boot Discovers Again They Have Been Shipping Non-Free Code

GNU Boot is a "100% free software project aimed at replacing the non-free boot software" and is a downstream of Coreboot, GRUB, and SeaBIOS. While priding itself on being "100% free", last December they had to drop some motherboard support and CPU code after discovering they were shipping some files that are non-free by their free software standards. Today they announced another mistake in having inadvertently been shipping additional non-free code.

GNU Boot discovered an issue with non-free code affecting not only them but also some of the Linux distributions that pride themselves on being fully free software / 100% open-source. This latest snafu they say is "more problematic" than their prior non-free code discover due to impacting the free software Linux distributions too.

The issue at hand though comes down to test data contained within the archive and that containing non-free code in the form of microcode, BIOS bits, and Intel Management Engine firmware.

Today's announcement explains:

"The vboot source code used in Coreboot and in the vboot-utils package available in many GNU/Linux distributions contains nonfree code in their test data in tests/futility/data (nonfree microcode, nonfree BIOS, nonfree Management Engine firmwares, etc)."

So from a user perspective, not as worrisome unless being a free software purist as ultimately it amounts to bundled test data.

In any event they have re-spun their latest releases to avoid these non-free code bits. This commit makes the change to remove all the assets from the offending directory.