The FSF would like to prepare some PR around this response an FSF supporter got from Intel customer care representative asking them about support for free BIOS on Intel hardware. Any thoughts from the coreboot community on this?
-------------------------- Thanks for your email.
Writing BIOS code is not like writing an OS device driver. Chipset specifications can vary not just between chipset models, but between steppings of the same chipset. Problems in chipset hardware and problems in BIOS code are hard to distinguish without specific hardware instrumentation. End user BIOS replacement with a third- party BIOS (whether free or not) on a commercial motherboard is not allowed by nearly all hardware vendors because of the potential for BIOS viruses and the risk of rendering the hardware useless through ill-advised modifications. For example, a laptop battery could explode if incorrect power management algorithms were applied.
BIOS is a part of the reliability and performance promise of the hardware. Chipset specifications at the level being discussed are commonly considered proprietary by all silicon vendors, not just Intel.
The open source firmware work that Intel *is* sponsoring could lead to a solution where proprietary low-level chipset initialization code from silicon vendors is made compatible with open source higher-level platform initialization and pre-boot management. If you are interested, we invite you to participate at www.tianocore.org.
Thanks once again for your interest in Intel.
Sincerely,
Intel Customer Support --------------------------
Thanks, Ward.