On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 5:23 AM, Joe joe@settoplinux.org wrote:
I couldn't agree with you more Richard, but on the other hand it is nice to think someday Intel will wake up and realize the world is changing around them :-)
that's a form letter that we have seen before. It's a "canned response". So, they have thought enough about the issue to have a standard corporately-approved position letter all ready to go when folks ask this question. And, we all know it's baloney.
What I find amusing about their "third party BIOS" comment is that *every* BIOS is a third party BIOS, and many if not all of them are based on reverse engineering done years ago. The least of the worries was chipset specs; the chipset specs were mostly open.
Ah well. They're either going to win, and BIOSes will remain proprietary; or, we'll win, and the x86 BIOS world will be as open as the ARM, MIPS, PPC, and others are. One thing I've noticed -- no matter how long the odds may seem, it's always a mistake to bet against free/open source. So far, every time Intel has worked against free and open source, they've lost -- and they've tried many times in the last 30 years.
ron