[coreboot] [RFC] marketing coreboot after recent support of AMD board

[Marc Jones]

Hi Paul,

On Thu, Feb 24, 2011 at 6:18 AM, Paul Menzel
<paulepanter at users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
> Dear coreboot community,
>
>
> it is really amazing what happened in the last years and especially in
> the last months. A lot of people came – for me – out of nowhere and did
> great contributions. Also AMD did great with their latest contributions
> [1].
>
> Today, Scott sent a patch to the list to support the board ASRock E350M1
> [2, 3, 4]. If I am not mistaken there have been only a few cases, it
> could be the first, where such a *recent* consumer board is supported by
> coreboot. And that is the reason I am writing this message.
>
> This also means that most of the computer magazines (online – at least
> in Europe – and print) have not yet published reviews and the board is
> not yet old enough to be considered by consumers. You guys have more
> experience than I on how these reviewer networks work, but is there an
> easy way to get these boards tested by these people with coreboot?
>
> I came up with the following steps to be accomplished to reach that
> goal.
>
>     1. Contact ASRock. Does anyone have contacts at ASRock to get
>        documentation or even hardware or man power?
>     2. Get Windows running. Scott wrote that Windows does not boot yet.
>        Since the market share of Windows in the home desktop market is
>        still the biggest, that would of course be a requirement.
>     3. Get GNU/Linux running. I think FLOSS users are more open to try
>        new things. So to get to them, GNU/Linux should at least be able
>        to boot.
>     4. Wiki page and feature list. A page in our Wiki [5] should be set
>        up with detailed instructions on how to create an image, what
>        features (ACPI, power management, suspend/resume, connectors, …)
>        work and, when the patch is committed, what revision was tested.
>     5. Comparison with the vendor BIOS. People of course would only be
>        interested if coreboot is superior to the vendor BIOS. And I
>        would imagine that normal users would be most interested in boot
>        time. Is coreboot faster?
>     6. Flashrom support or “precompiled” images. To make it easy for
>        the reviewers and early adopters flashing using Flashrom should
>        work or precompiled images should be made available, if it is
>        legally possible, and even flash chips offered or send to the
>        reviewers which they can easily plug into the board and start
>        testing. Is there a foundation (e. g. FSF), organization or
>        cooperation (e. g. Google) which could sponsor to buy like
>        200(?) spare flash chips, which then can be programmed? What
>        flash chips are compatible with this board?
>     7. Contact everybody. When all of the above has been accomplished,
>        the magazines, reviewing sites, news sites, LUGs, communities
>        should be informed. Magazines get the chips send to and
>        consumers can order them from a coreboot developer.
>
> Do you think that is a feasible roadmap? If yes, a lot of testing and
> work needs to be done and Scott, of course, cannot do that alone. So
> people willing to help, should get a this board, spare flash chips, and
> start mostly testing. I am not a developer, so I could not help to
> improve the support, but I could test and maybe even create a live image
> to flash that image from an USB storage device.
>
> It looks difficult though to get this board [6].
>
> Another chicken and egg problem is, if this announcement should be made
> public outside of the coreboot community only after support is complete
> or before, i. e., are there communities (e. g. FSF) or project
> developers which would help to support this effort?
>
> Unfortunately CeBit is going to already start next week, so we will not
> be able to show the new support off there.
>
>
> I am looking forward to your thoughts. Thanks,
>
> Paul
>
>
> [1] http://www.coreboot.org/News#2011.2F2.2F14_AMD_submits_coreboot_support_for_AMD_Embedded_G-Series_Platforms
> [2] http://www.coreboot.org/pipermail/coreboot/2011-February/063737.html
> [3] http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=E350M1
> [4] http://notabs.org/pictures/ASRock-E350M1/
> [5] http://www.coreboot.org/Welcome_to_coreboot
> [6] http://www.coreboot.org/pipermail/coreboot/2011-February/063757.html


These are all great points. I am also motivated to market coreboot
better. AMD and Sage are putting effort into press release and blog
postings this week and around Embedded World next week. I think that
your plan is well thought out and would certainly help market
coreboot. You have highlighted some key areas, and I like that you
have highlighted things that are not specifically development.
Coreboot developers are pretty good about writing code and making
systems work. We are not so good about marketing and documentation
etc.

It is difficult for systems developers to evaluate coreboot without
investing a lot of time, in getting, building, flashing, etc. I like
the idea of some precompiled images that can be downloaded and flashed
on a system with some confidence that they "just work". There is still
inherent risk that board versions have made something incompatible
etc. This effort and risk is one reason that the cost of entry into
coreboot is so high.

I'm excited that you see the potential of coreboot and have thought
about better ways to help get it recognized and help make it a viable
choice for system developers, ultimately giving users the choice of
the software they want to run. I think that the steps you outline are
not serial, but can be done in parallel. I also think that coreboot
would see benefit from doing any of the points you have made. If you
were to take the lead on one or more,  I think others would follow and
cooperate.It just requires a little momentum. I think that updating
our wiki with fresh and accurate information would be a great place to
start. I want to start cross-posting the news, blogs, and press
releases about coreboot this week on the coreboot wiki news page.

Is there one thing on your list that you could lead?

Marc

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