Hello All,

We regret to announce that PC Engines, a provider of small and low-power
servers for network security, wireless networking, and embedded
applications, has discontinued its sponsorship for open-source firmware.
Although this is a significant change for the open-source firmware
community, our commitment to supporting the hardware remains strong.
At Dasharo, we aim to continue the legacy of PC Engines by distributing
open-source firmware and putting the community's needs first. Our focus
will be on releases and feature sets driven by community support.
We are considering a subscription model to ensure stable and reliable
firmware updates. Your input is important to us, and we would appreciate
your feedback through our survey at https://forms.gle/MHrT2f1du1Afvwvj9.
Please help us understand how we can better serve the open-source
firmware community and ensure its success in the future.

Full details:
https://docs.dasharo.com/variants/pc_engines/post-eol-fw-announcement

Best regards,
Norbert Kamiński
Junior Marketing Specialist at 3mdeb

On 9.11.2022 13:36, Paul Menzel wrote:
> Dear coreboot folks,
>
>
> Two days ago, on November 7th, the change-sets of the topic
> *drop_LEGACY_SMP_INIT* [1] were submitted after being created on
> November 2nd [2].
>
> The removal was announced on the list some time ago and was documented
> in the release notes.
>
> 1.  RESOURCE_ALLOCATOR_V3 in the 4.16 release notes [3]
> 2.  LEGACY_SMP_INIT in the 4.16, 4.17, and 4.18 release notes [4]
>
> (I think that planned deprecations should to be listed in each release
> note.)
>
> Despite the missing RESOURCE_ALLOCATOR_V3 deprecation announcement in
> 4.17 and 4.18, everything was done formally correct, nevertheless I
> would have wished, more time would have been given and the actions would
> have been announced once more on the mailing list.
>
> My understanding was always, that code removal will be handled more
> leniently, if the required changes are being worked on. This was the
> case here for parallel SMP init [5] and resource allocator v4 [6]. Some
> change-sets even had a +1 or +2. The request for testing was also
> fulfilled by the users. Some of the change-sets were even authored by
> “non-AGESA“ folks, which was awesome to see.
>
> Letting this effort go to waste without documenting somewhere, what
> needed to be done to finish these change-sets makes me sad. 3mdeb also
> invested resources into implementing some of the features.
>
> The last thing I noticed, that at least for the PC Engines board
> removal, the approval of the maintainers listed in `MAINTAINERS` was not
> given, and should have been waited for. The +2 itself were also by
> developers normally not (very) active with AMD AGESA Open Source boards.
>
> The points above are just my observations, and, hopefully, things can
> improve in the future to avoid bad feelings. I am thankful to everyone
> working on coreboot, and I also understand the frustration of having to
> maintain several code paths.
>
> Although I own and run two of the removed boards, I am fine to move to
> the branch *4.18_branch* although I am not happy about it, as branches
> also increase maintenance burden.
>
> The main reason for writing this message is to ask, if entities (read
> 3mdeb) have big interest in getting part of the boards back into the
> master branch, so that the already made investments are not in vain, and
> nobody is alienated from working upstream. If that is a goal, this
> effort should be coordinated as reverting commits is going to become
> harder and harder. mb/aopen/dxplplusu (Intel) is already worked on to be
> put back into the master branch [7].
>
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Paul
>
>
> [1]: https://review.coreboot.org/q/topic:drop_LEGACY_SMP_INIT
> [2]: https://review.coreboot.org/c/coreboot/+/69111/2
> [3]:
> https://review.coreboot.org/plugins/gitiles/coreboot/+/refs/tags/4.18/Documentation/releases/coreboot-4.16-relnotes.md
> [4]:
> https://review.coreboot.org/plugins/gitiles/coreboot/+/refs/tags/4.18/Documentation/releases/coreboot-4.18-relnotes.md
> [5]: https://review.coreboot.org/c/coreboot/+/64892
>        "cpu/amd/family15: Use parallel_mp init"
> [6]: https://review.coreboot.org/c/coreboot/+/53990
>        "nb/amd/agesa/family15tn: Enable RESOURCE_ALLOCATOR_V4"
> [7]: https://review.coreboot.org/c/coreboot/+/69339
>        "Revert "mb/aopen/dxplplusu: Remove board""
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