Dear Martin,
Am 08.11.21 um 19:38 schrieb Martin Roth:
Nov 7, 2021, 04:13 by nico.h@gmx.de:
On 07.11.21 00:11, Martin Roth wrote:
CB:55367 was pushed on June 9th. It's 5 months later. Intel hasn't been able to get it merged yet. Sure, we're not outright saying they can't get it in, but in effect, that's what's happening.
Yes, 5 months stalled, because nobody told them that we should discuss it. Hence my proposal to discuss things early. You don't like it? Please propose something better.
Okay, I'm removing the rest of this conversation now that you've agreed that you are actually talking about blocking platforms because of blobs.
Sorry, where did you read that? I didn’t. Please keep in mind, that English is not the native language for everyone, so if there is something unclear, please ask to clarify.
We both agree that we want things to be discussed. Let's start the conversation early, that's great. You want to block things until you're satisfied. I disagree. Blocking patches just makes companies work on a fork, and actually prevents the progress we all want. We both want coreboot to stay alive, and unfortunately, right now, that means that we're stuck dealing with blobs on the platforms that require them. If someone in a country that allows reverse engineering wants to work on replacing the blobs, that's great. Until then, they're the unfortunate reality.
Again, I think we misunderstand each other.
It’s about getting change-sets reviewed properly, and that includes how they fit into the project. And yes, (proprietary) blobs have proven to be a huge problem in the past putting a big burden on the community. So it’s only valid to review these patches properly. And now we are back to a general problem, unrelated to blobs. How to get the focus of the right reviewers to the right change-sets. I noticed the change-set by chance, and should have asked to discuss this on the list already in July. There is also a two month gap, when nothing happened. Again, I’d say, asking on the list helps in such cases. After attention was raised, developers reviewed the change-set, and it improved a lot.
The advantage to putting things into the coreboot tree is that EVERYONE needs to work to not break other people's stuff with their changes. The coreboot community includes intel and AMD, and Google, and Secunet along with the people who don't work for any company. It's not any one individual's job, it's everyone's.
That is how it should work. I do not have statistics at hand, but besides a handful of people, it’s not really happening, as we only have very few developers, who understand the whole project well enough to do and review certain changes.
If someone doesn't want to deal with the blobs, then just don't. You can't break those platforms, but you also don't have to work on them. Just don't use those platforms.
Excuse my ignorance, but reading some of the change-sets, that is not the reality. You also have to deal with the platforms using blobs, if you want to do tree wide improvements.
As Ron said, "coreboot is best effort, not perfection."
That’s a good statement, but as perfection is a long way ahead, all the discussion here revolves around the best effort.
Let's try to work together on making things better
Yes. It’s my impression, a big part of the discussion was about two misunderstandings. I’d still say, it’d be great, if Nico drafted changes for the binary policy, so we can discuss something concrete.
Kind regards,
Paul