Some Intel Firmware Binaries Will Reportedly Be More Liberally Licensed
Open-source firmware consulting firm 3mdeb shared that Intel will reportedly publish TXT-related binaries like BIOS and SINIT ACMs under a similar license to the Intel FSP and microcode.
News from @osfc_io. It looks like @intel will publish Intel TXT related binaries (BIOS and SINIT ACMs) on similar license to FSP and uCode. Those are great news!
— 3mdeb (@3mdeb_com) September 5, 2019
It was last year that Intel cleared up their microcode licensing under a simpler license and presumably would be the same license for these additional boot/firmware related bits.
At OSFC 2019, there hasn't been anything new on Intel completely opening up their Firmware Support Package (FSP) as open-source or freeing the Management Engine or anything along those lines. Though there are a number of Intel engineers there talking about their modern firmware efforts, Minimum Platform effort, and related initiatives that are at least partially open. We're still waiting to see how Raja's efforts will ultimately play out for what he's talked of before as potentially open-sourcing the FSP but at least when talking to him back at OSTS was still a work-in-progress.
It's nice seeing Intel at least better embracing Coreboot these days even though some binary blobs are still at play. Coreboot does seem content with pulling in binary components as we've seen with the existing FSP and other components, to the point the effort is less about being an open-source BIOS/firmware implementation and more about being an open framework. So as more hardware vendors begin supporting Coreboot, for open-source fans it's important to realize that alone is less impactful compared to before, but for those looking at a completely open-source solution there is the Oreboot project in its early stages, Libreboot for being a fully libre Coreboot downstream, and the likes of Raptor Computing Systems' hardware that is completely open and transparent to the user.
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