Difference between Linxubios native's Elfboot and Linuxbios native's Filo

[ron minnich]

On 4 Jun 2004, Mathieu Deschamps wrote:

> > The native ``filo'' is scheduled for deletion, it touches hardwaremain
> > which it should not.  As implemented it is a maintenance nightmare and
> > an implementation of policy and I refuse to support it, in the core of
> > LinuxBIOS.  Until just a little while ago I thought it was much less
> > intrusive so was not forcing the issue.
> 
> ok I understand.


well, I am afraid I do not. 

No one has contacted any of the other core maintainers of linuxbios and
vetted this suggestion of scheduling components for deletion. This
suggestion of deleting the embedded filo came out of left field, at least 
to me. Major changes on this level need discussion!

LinuxBIOS is a cooperative project. People add things from time to time
that others do not like. Every other core member of this project has added
software, at times, that I was not totally happy with, but I also have not
deleted such software because it is the nature of shared open source
projects that you can't keep everyone 100% happy all of the time. There
are things in both V1 and V2 I dislike very much, but I recognize the
right of authorship and the differences of opinion that come with
different people writing different code.

I should probably remind everyone here that this project was started by
LANL, and that the control of this project remains at LANL. We are a
non-profit, and I hope neutral, third party. I have had questions from
time to time about whether this or that commercial entity has too much
control of the project, and my response has always been: "Don't worry,
calm down, LANL is neutral here and can make sure we play fair". This 
type of query is serious. At one point I had a commercial company 
hinting about legal action as they felt that another company was 
holding back on releasing code to CVS. I was able to calm that one 
down too, simply by pointing out the role that LANL plays. 

LANL has a duty to provide a level playing ground for all involved. We can
not and will not allow deletions of subsystems deemed important by users
without some amount of discussion first, followed by some sort of
agreement. We had hoped to hash these issues out at the linuxbios summit
but were unable to bring that meeting to fruition.

Short form: I would ask all involved not to take actions that could lead 
to consequences we will all regret. 

ron