On Fri, Sep 05, 2008 at 06:10:44PM +0200, Carl-Daniel Hailfinger wrote:
The most interesting question is why these GRUB patches were not merged upstream. If any, that may reflect badly on the image of GRUB.
I won't argue against your preconception that this is GRUB's fault, mainly because this is a thing of the past, and I believe both sides have agreed to move on, but also because my perspective is probably biased.
To answer your question, suffice to say that the FSF and Coresystems didn't agree on the legal framework to be used for the contributions, because of a variety of reasons which I don't even know in detail. Therefore both sides exercised their legitimate right not to engage in collaboration under terms that weren't suitable for them.
If I expressed any opinion about this before, it is a mistake, and I now reserve my opinion for myself. I don't represent the FSF, and the only thing I care right now is to make GRUB as good as possible so that coreboot users may find coreboot/GRUB a suitable combination.