OpenBIOS February 1999

openbios@openbios.org

24 participants
24 discussions

To Join GNU?
by M Carling 04 Feb '99

04 Feb '99

There are some advantages to joining GNU: Publicity, which means more contributors Credibility, which may get MB manufacturers to evaluate the code sooner On the other hand, RMS is petty about semantics. I think that not being allowed to use the term "open source" is silly. And then there's the restriction about "GNU/Linux" vs "Linux" which presents special problems for the OpenBIOS project becase the BIOS software is generally concerned with the kernel rather than with the whole OS. RMS might not be too pleased about us calling Linux "Linux" even though we really only mean the kernel, in cases where we *could* mean the OS. I'm not opposed to joining GNU, but doing so will entail putting up with RMS's politics and rants. M

2 1

Back soon.
by Stefan Reinauer 04 Feb '99

04 Feb '99

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hi Openbios hackers, I am sorry for my long time of silence. I had to finnish a lot of work of which I thought it could be done much faster. I expect to be able to spend quite much time for OpenBIOS starting from next week. I got a complete intel testing machine plus 2 motherboards for testing with OpenBIOS (one is an old SMP board). I got my old vt100 Terminal running now, too Niklas Ekström wrote a little Program which is able so put a disk file into the shadowed ram from 0xe0000-0xfffff. This allows to test a bios without needing to flash it. I had no time to test it yet. Thanks, Niklas. I'll put it on the web page as soon as I finnished the last stuff here. I'll finally try to move the OpenBIOS homepage and mailing list to openbios.org We had some problems with our mail server here which caused a lot of "Too many hops" mails to be sent out and deliver some mails more than one time. I suspect it was some software update on our universities mail gateway, so I don't think it will happen again soon. Last week I got mail from Richard Stallman asking whether we want to become an official GNU project. We should discuss whether to do so or not. Here's an excerpt from what he wrote: - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Here's an explanation of what it means for a program to be GNU software. I would be very glad to have OpenBIOS as a GNU Program, if that's what the developers of OpenBIOS would like. ====================================================================== Calling a program GNU software means that its developers and the GNU project agree that "This program is part of the GNU project, released under the aegis of GNU"--and say so in the program. This means we would normally put the program on ftp.gnu.org (although we could instead refer to the developer's choice of ftp site) and we would want to put pages about the program on the GNU web server. It means that the developers would agree pay some attention to making the program work well with the rest of the GNU system--and conversely that the GNU project would encourage other GNU maintainers to pay some attention to making their programs fit in well with it. Just what it means to make programs work well together is mainly a practical matter that depends on what the program does. But there are a few general principles. Certain parts of the GNU coding standards directly affect the consistency of the whole system. These include the standards for configuring and building a program, and the standards for command-line options. It is important to make all GNU programs follow these standards, where they are applicable. A GNU program should not recommend use of any non-free program, and it should not refer the user to any non-free documentation. The need for free documentation is now a major focus of the GNU project; to show that we are serious about the need for free documentation, we must not contradict our position by recommending use of documentation that isn't free. Occasionally there are issues of terminology which are important for the success of the GNU project as a whole. So we ask maintainers of GNU programs to follow them. For example, the documentation files and comments in the program should speak of Linux-based GNU systems or GNU/Linux systems, rather than calling the whole system "Linux", and should use the term "free software" rather than "open source". Deciding that a program is GNU software does not necessarily require transferring copyright to the FSF; that is a separate issue. - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Especially the documentation passage may be a problem for us. But anyways, I'd like the idea of having openbios an official gnu project - what do you think? Best regards, Stefan - -- Reincarnation: Life sucks, then you die. Then life sucks again. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: noconv iQEVAwUBNrhKryu+zKndEmP5AQGU3AgAsn8JmaQ5zTC/W3ubGUQF/qobWyb9Svkv Y/2lqj1nRA+6XVsqkUVuRpZFFhkFmGZG753ere6Ue2on86t/0qM3BxjDG0pQIyfa pYm/dF0SlJz5TD6U3WRiw5lSCZ5CYcoTWYCGZyh3DBlKdBfD9eRVp6pEjRka+yvz xStaLV3/ndeTPhg7NfekywnKn5Eoig9/xwTbuL9Q7hiUzvYcf0/WlvVUhfYnVWy4 9EloQgw09gyvHg7DaX3z4dAjNdF7K6qq7WOm8ZAimoM/blYGuQ1s6uVSaSB6GK7p C7jBdLEPk6SUC9L5QqdVDmafsJBYOoJ8zhBviHAfLTG5gEaRpwJdgQ== =g71u -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

2 1

Some stuff...
by Mircea Ciocan 03 Feb '99

03 Feb '99

M Carling wrote: > > Welcome! > > I'm the FAQ maintainer, so I'll try to answer your questions. > > OpenBIOS is envisioned to serve the needs of MB manufacturers, hobbyists, > and embedded systems developers. > Great... :) > There is no list archive yet, AFAIK. This is something we need to do. > O.K., I'll keep every message on my computer, it seems from the low traffic that my 10GB disk won't be filled right away ;) and I'll try to setup a digest and an archive. BTW. feel free to forward me any relevant old message. > The guidelines are still flexible. About the only thing on which there > seems to be a clear consensus (that had been controversial) is that > OpenBIOS should support (as a compile time option) multiple chipsets > in a single executable. This would enable MB manufacturers to compile > one BIOS image for all their products. > And now the BIGGEST question: what will that BIOS be, a resource configurator and OS loader and nothing after boot, or it will offer some services to be used after boot, if so what services and how? I think that is the fundamental part of the design guidelines. Related: are those guidelines somewere in a written format, is about the IEEE 1275 ummm.... thing ?????? As for multi-chipset, multi-processor support I think is a good thing and Award's approach with a BIOS boot block who probe and then decompress and load in the shadow memory the relevant module archives stored in ROM is the best, of course YMHO. But somehow I don't thing that the resultant image will be small enogh to be hold in a 128KB Flash like now, I belive this mostly irellevant for Main Boards manufacturers but a BIG deal for embedded systems, of course somebody could want to compile in only the necessary modules. > There is no subproject leader for embedded systems, at this time. > Then to put in another way, is anybody on this list doing embedded BIOS/systems now ??? Please answer here or e-mail me so we can figure out somethig because unfortunately in a embedded system we have a totally different thingie like no "simple" OS loader, maybe even no OS at all, but just a highly optimised API framework and yes I know that somewere is a grossly over-priced Embedded DOS but I don't thing this is a solution. Sugestions and comment wellcome :). > The leader is Stefan Reinauer <stepan(a)linux.de> > > I don't have any docs on the boards you asked about. > All right, I'll cry just once more: :) PLEAZZ, pleazz, if some one has access at ALI chips ( mostly ALI 6117C and super I/O) detailed documentation get in touch with me, is important for me and maybe for the Open Source movement. > Cheers, > M All the best, Mircea C.

4 4

Strange things...
by Mircea Ciocan 01 Feb '99

01 Feb '99

Now, unfortunately not :((((((, I'm sorry for that I think there is a loop or some other misconfiguration on the list processor that make it spit so many messages, and boy they were long :((((((. I'll see what's matter with this one because if the situation repeats is about time to contact list maintainer to cut that "nice" echo ;). Mircea "red faced" Ciocan P.S. Certainly a misconfiguration, this message bounced back from openbios(a)linux.freiburg.de, the host just diappeared... Simon Zarrin wrote: > > Mircea, > > Am I the only one who has now received 6 copies of this email? > > --ssz >

2 1