Open letter regarding a more open FSP codebase

[coreboot org]

Hi everyone,

Subrata has written a fantastic proposal for a plan to reduce the work
done by the Intel FSP, and transition that work into open source
implementations.[1] This would be a good initial step towards what the
open source firmware communities would like to see, which is, of
course, to have all the firmware to be completely open and well
documented.

In looking towards that goal, a group of people including myself have
drafted an open letter to intel, asking that they consider Subrata’s
proposal and work with us to achieve the slimming, then replacement of
the FSP-S functionality with open source code [2]. The drafters of
this open letter agree that this will benefit all open source firmware
communities along with Intel, and ultimately their customers.

I understand that some will see this as an underwhelming change, but
please look at it instead as at least a step in the direction that
we’d like to see.  I believe that these small steps, if shown to be
beneficial to Intel and their customers, will lead to larger changes,
pushing the boundaries between open and proprietary codebases even
further in favor of openness.

If you agree with our thoughts, please take the time to read through
Subrata’s proposal and the open letter to Intel, and consider adding
your support behind these by signing onto the letter [2].

Thanks very much for your time, and take care.

Martin

[1]: https://blog.osfw.foundation/osf-intel-reduce-fsp-boundary/
[2]: https://openletter.earth/adopting-open-source-firmware-approach-for-intel-fs...

[Peter Stuge]

coreboot org wrote:
> Subrata has written a fantastic proposal for a plan to reduce the work
> done by the Intel FSP, and transition that work into open source
> implementations.[1]

While that's worthwhile for legacy platforms, I feel that the vastly
more important objective re. Intel is to not allow UEFI and/or USF to
be forced into RISC-V.

https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/17/intel_riscv_contributions/

//Peter

[Arthur Heymans]

Hi

Awesome initiative!

I think more openness around FSP-S is indeed the best way to start
improving things for both developers and users on Intel hardware.
It's not uncommon that you have to tell a customer that you can't fix a
problem because the cause is inside the FSP.
Even if you have the source code and can fix the issue yourself, getting
that inside the officially redistributable FSP is hard.

Feature overlap is also another place where integrating the opaque FSP can
get awkward and potentially insecure.
So it is not always clear which project owns which hardware configuration.
You need to have good knowledge of the hardware
AND coreboot AND FSP to be able to make a good judgement on this, which is
just more painful than it needs to be.

Last but not least, having a real community around a firmware project and
hardware is simply a very good idea to improve the experience for everyone.
I think openness with regard to the code is not enough for that, but it is
a non-starter without that.

I really hope this moves forward and thanks those starting this effort!

Kind regards
Arthur

On Fri, Jun 3, 2022 at 9:54 PM coreboot org  wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> Subrata has written a fantastic proposal for a plan to reduce the work
> done by the Intel FSP, and transition that work into open source
> implementations.[1] This would be a good initial step towards what the
> open source firmware communities would like to see, which is, of
> course, to have all the firmware to be completely open and well
> documented.
>
> In looking towards that goal, a group of people including myself have
> drafted an open letter to intel, asking that they consider Subrata’s
> proposal and work with us to achieve the slimming, then replacement of
> the FSP-S functionality with open source code [2]. The drafters of
> this open letter agree that this will benefit all open source firmware
> communities along with Intel, and ultimately their customers.
>
> I understand that some will see this as an underwhelming change, but
> please look at it instead as at least a step in the direction that
> we’d like to see.  I believe that these small steps, if shown to be
> beneficial to Intel and their customers, will lead to larger changes,
> pushing the boundaries between open and proprietary codebases even
> further in favor of openness.
>
> If you agree with our thoughts, please take the time to read through
> Subrata’s proposal and the open letter to Intel, and consider adding
> your support behind these by signing onto the letter [2].
>
> Thanks very much for your time, and take care.
>
> Martin
>
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