Nico Huber has posted comments on this change. ( https://review.coreboot.org/c/coreboot/+/38044 )
Change subject: amd_blobs: Always set default paths ......................................................................
Patch Set 1:
And I expected some discussion here :) ... I have no strong feelings about it...
I'm having trouble deciding how much I really care about it. The only corner case I can think of is sort of ridiculous, i.e. if someone doesn't agree to AMD's simplified license but has functional blobs and rights to use or distribute them in a finished product. Of course, for bootleg copies or images harvested from a shipping image, I really don't care within the context of this discussion.
Even such case would still be possible, we'd only change defaults, without reducing flexibility.
If I compare against Intel, FSP systems (I only looked at APL...) it won't build without the include files in 3rdparty/fsp but the path can be modified with menuconfig. Hmm, looks like CONFIG_ADD_FSP_BINARIES isn't set by default, and I didn't see a warning about that.
Ah, yes I forgot, binary hook-up with FSP is still a mess. What I described should be true for older Intel targets with MRC binary (where available) and the microcode updates.
Anyway, I wonder if the aim should be to attempt to build anything where coreboot.org has vendors' assets available for download. Then for anything we're not allowed to redistribute, like Intel Flash Descriptor, we give an option to add it if the user possesses it; if they don't, build anyway but with a scary warning.
Ack. That's what I'm aim at.
(The IFD isn't the best example though, it's merely configuration data. That we don't check it in is mostly because it's not directly coreboot related and not needed: ODM/OEM should have it anyway and their customers get it with the hardware.)