On Mon, 30 Jun 2008 15:14:40 -0600, Jordan Crouse jordan.crouse@amd.com wrote:
On 30/06/08 13:18 -0400, Joseph Smith wrote:
On Mon, 30 Jun 2008 18:28:37 +0200, Ward Vandewege ward@gnu.org wrote:
On Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 10:18:47AM -0400, Joseph Smith wrote:
Maybe it is just me, but it seems like lately there have been a lot
of
posts to the mailing list about, coreboot not supporting ANY Intel chipsets/cpu's. Is there rumors spreading around the mill??? If so we
need
to nip this in the bud, this is probably discouraging people that
want
to
get involved with coreboot.
Well - look at it from the other perspective. Intel's being difficult.
The
more obvious that becomes, the more they will be encouraged to change their ways and become more friendly and open.
I don't think spreading the word that coreboot does not support anything Intel is a positive way to accomplish anything. It just frustrates and discourages people willing to get involved. We have to face the facts
here,
Intel may never get involved with coreboot, so the next best thing is to get as many developers involved willing to take the time to fill in the missing pieces of code. Thinking ouside of the box. This is what I did
for
the i830, It might have taken me a little longer, but in the long run I
did
it without any help from Intel (except for one public datasheet).
Honesty is the best (and only) practice here. Firmware development is hard - exceedingly hard, and thats with copious amounts of documentation.
Don't get me wrong I agree that it is hard no matter what documenation is available.
Without documentation, it becomes nearly impossible. Somebody look at the Barcelona memory initialization code and tell me they could have figured it out on their own. I'm thinking not.
So we have to be blatantly obvious about what our shortcomings are. You can believe all you want in the power of open source, but the truth of the matter is that 90% of all the people who come on this list to ask for a particular port are not interested in doing the work themselves,
And that maybe part of the problem with Intel hardware, everyone wants it but noone wants to work for it. I am far too familure with this, trust me.
and the precious few that are willing to do the work need to be told right up front what they are facing.
I was, and took it as a challenge, just like I am going to do with the USB debugging device.
They need to know what NDAs they need to secure, what code distribution rights they need to ask for, and just how difficult this work really is, especially in the cpu/* and northbridge/* directories.
Thats not to say that people shouldn't be encouraged to ask the right questions - if enough people ask a vendor for datasheets, it might have a positive effect.
Agreed.
But acting as though we are not developing from behind the eight ball is going to give everybody the wrong impression,
I hope I never implied that, I just want to give positive encouragement.
and it will result in even more upset feelings then if we just told them right off the bat that they are asking for something that probably isn't going to happen.
Agreed. But when someone asks If we support Intel hardware, telling them "no we don't go away" so to speak, do you expect a positive reaction? No, If someone said that to me I wouldn't even bother and just look for another bios solution and maybe even have a few comments about the group that didn't even bother, or offer help.
And just in case this sounds like I'm bashing the competition, know that my own company is in the same boat. We have yet to release the datasheet for the SB600, and until we do, I'm going to be the first to tell the honest truth if somebody asks for it.
Jordan, I have been involved with coreboot for about a year and a half now, and no matter how Intel feels about coreboot, which I keep hearing over and over, it is time to move in a new direction, and try something else. It is kind of like this: We call the pizza guy to deliver our pizza but he never shows up. What do we do? Keep calling the pizza guy to deliver our pizza over and over agian hoping someday he will show up? In the mean time we are getting hungrier and hungrier. Or, do we get up and go get pizza somwhere else? In the end, the second option was more work, but we stiil got pizza and fed our gut.
I hope you get my point.