On 18-11-13 14:23, Patrick Georgi wrote:
Am 17.11.2013 21:46, schrieb Alex:
[Broken record warning] What if, somehow, the community gathered a few brains, talked to a vendor, and convinced them to put coreboot on a yet-to-be-released product? It would almost seem like the community would do most of the work for free. What sort of responses have we received in the past with this approach? System 76, ThinkPenguin, Pudget, etc... have we tried any of them? They have sleek systems, and at least the first two value openness more than the average.
Those three list Intel based notebooks only (not even a token AMD device).
Even worse, some have nVidia hardware in it making them even less attractive (yes Nuveou is progressing nicely, this is true).
From the point of view of free firmware, all of them are unsuitable, since free (and open, and trustable) Intel firmware implementations are only available for museum class^W^Wlong-term support hardware.
I think the only x86 notebook with completely free firmware these days that can be bought easily is http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/product/ibm-lenovo-thinkpad-x60-coreboot/ (featuring those Intel museum chips)
And I guess doing something like that group is the only working approach for now: Pick some notebook (something recent), free its firmware, sell the pre-modded boxes (and publish numbers!). If you manage to sell significant volumes (which shouldn't be all that large), that might turn some heads.
But then we get back to the start of this thread, to little people actually care (or know off) coreboot.
There are some issues with this approach: You're limited in your choice of base hardware (likely AMD/Via chipsets only, the EC must be manageable with reasonable effort) and it must be available for some time (no fun doing a port for 2 months, then selling the notebook for another 4, after which it's taken off the market, and you have to start from scratch). And, of course, when doing this, you carry the usual entrepreneurial risk.
while hardware stays around a lot longer then it used to (most are fast enough), finding one that can be easily supported is hard.
AMD should "develop" (e.g. get some ODM to supply it) some reference laptops and donate some to coreboot devs. Pitch in a bit to help where needed and I smell a winner. Since AMD belives in coreboot and support coreboot, making it actually happen would be in their own interest no?
Oliver
Patrick