[coreboot] [Fwd: Re: Contact Intel]

[Torsten Duwe]

On Thursday 01 May 2008, Richard M Stallman wrote:

> Some of the points are simply distractions or illogical.  For
> instance:
>
>     BIOS is a part of the reliability and performance promise of the
>     hardware.
>
> Is that true?  If so, so what?  That is no reason not to let us run
> our own BIOS.

Well, sort of. From my experience, which very likely most on this list can 
share, BIOS is used to cover up defects in the hardware. Thus, it's a PR 
question, not a technical one.

> 	       Chipset specifications at the level being discussed are
>     commonly considered proprietary by all silicon vendors, not just
>     Intel.

As Peter has already mentioned, that's a lie^W^Woutdated. Additionally to 
Peter's points, the new "gallium" driver for mesa is being developed for a 
pure software pipeline and, as the only hardware implementation,...
TADAAA: intel onboard graphics i915.

> However, it is false: some computer models do work with free BIOS.
> Intel compares badly with them.  This is one of the statements that
> maybe could be criticized in a published response.
>
>     The open source firmware work that Intel *is* sponsoring could
>     lead to a solution where proprietary low-level chipset
>     initialization code from silicon vendors is made compatible with
>     open source higher-level platform initialization and pre-boot
>     management.
>
> As they say, this is not a complete free BIOS, just part of one.

As things look like today, it's a layer _on_top_ of what's currently known as 
BIOS. Besides, did they lift the royalties clause on UEFI yet?
(http://www.uefi.org/specs/agreement : "...implementation ... requires a 
license")

	Torsten