[coreboot] New addendums to INTEL FSP family (ron minnich)

Jiming Sun jiming.j.sun at gmail.com
Wed May 7 23:57:43 CEST 2014


Hi, Ron,

I am hesitant to respond because I am afraid that this is a philosophical
discussion that will stir a lot of strong opinions and debates.  :-)

If open source community is meant for collaboration and innovation, do you
think there can be silicon specific code that only a few people can
understand, therefore whether it is open or not really does not matter?
 Besides, if the code is meant to be part of SOC someday, does it matter
whether or not it is completely open?  For example, ARM has a Boot ROM
inside their SOC, should the code inside the Boot ROM be open? or does it
matter?

I think it is a balancing act that every silicon vendor needs to decide on.
 Some are more careful than the others.

I know some hard-core open source advocates would like to see every
software open including microcode, but from practicality perspective, if
the code cannot be modified by the community without causing adverse
effects, then it is not something that needs to be "collaborated" on; thus
open or not really does not matter.  I think you and some Google people
have provided this view in this forum sometimes in the past, Ron.

I know this view point is not going to be popular, but Intel is trying hard
to open as much code as possible (tianocore.org, Linux drivers, and Quark
firmware are a few examples; I am sure more will come in the future).

This conversation is meant for dialog, and it is my own opinions.  Just a
disclaimer: this is not Intel's official position, and I don't speak for
Intel.  :-)

After that being said, any comments about Intel's FSP are still welcome.
 We believe encapsulating basic silicon code is a good idea regardless if
it is completely open.

Thanks,
Jiming


On Mon, May 5, 2014 at 8:51 AM, ron minnich <rminnich at gmail.com> wrote:

> Jiming, why doesn't intel just put that more open stuff up on github
> and be done with it?
>
> ron
>



-- 
Blessings,

Jiming Sun
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