[coreboot] [Fwd: Re: Contact Intel]

[Stefan Reinauer]

Corey Osgood wrote:
> On Tue, May 6, 2008 at 7:32 PM, Carl-Daniel Hailfinger
> <c-d.hailfinger.devel.2006 at gmx.net
> <mailto:c-d.hailfinger.devel.2006 at gmx.net>> wrote:
>
>     On 07.05.2008 01:06, Richard M Stallman wrote:
>     > Would you like me to encourage a friendly journalist to contact
>     you to write about Intel's refusal to cooperate?
>     >
>
>     The preferred way would be to focus any article on praising the
>     companies supporting coreboot. We had a detailed list somewhere, we
>     could dig it up and mail it to you. Usually, shaming companies into
>     contributing doesn't work, but giving the good ones lots of good
>     publicity strengthens the positions of coreboot supporters in those
>     companies.
>
>
> Also, Intel could be doing a lot less to help us, and linux in
> general. Truncated datasheets are better then no datasheets.
>
> -Corey
I think we really should avoid the bashing at all. It is going to make a
nice hype and some technocrates will probably buy their hardware from
AMD instead of Intel, but this isn't changing the world. It isn't even
showing up in serious numbers.

So here's a story. I removed all the names to keep it neutral.

I remember it suddenly got harder talking to a very friendly CPU vendor
after they bought a graphics chip vendor, because one guy started
running around with a halo, telling that people should not buy from that
very graphics chip vendor, in a half-reflected way, similar to those my
ancestor countrymen suggested not to buy from certain groups of people.
Sorry, in my opinion this is absolutely the wrong direction. It just
creates hate, and makes talking to people harder.

I know that Intel is watching coreboot very well, and they had
themselves and their products inspired from us, feature-wise. Also,
there are many people working for Intel that love free and open source
software, and they think their corporate decisions toward certain areas
of software, where intel is still closed should be improved. And they
see very well that a bootloader that has 235MB checked out size, is not
a suitable solution for many of their customers.
I think what we need to do is get in contact with those people and
convince them to help us, not pointing fingers at corporations. Us
expecting corporations to be good or bad, doesn't work out. Corporations
have no soul, so they will never be. _People_ can do good, though, and
we need to find those that can help us and that we can convince that we
are doing the right thing.

Stefan