2024-02-07 - coreboot Leadership Meeting Minutes

# 2024-02-07 - coreboot Leadership Meeting Minutes

## Attendees

Mina Asante, Martin Roth, Felix Singer, Jay Talbott, Werner Zeh, Matt Devillier, Patrick Georgi,
Ahmed Elgogary, Jonathan Hall, Felix Held, Nicholas Chin, Simon Glass, Julius Werner, Varshit
Panda, David Hendricks, Nico Huber, Lean Sheng Tan, Max Brune.

## Open Action Items

* 2024-01-10
    * [Open] Werner: Push patch based on https://ticket.coreboot.org/issues/522
      * Nico: https://review.coreboot.org/q/topic:enforce_region_api
    * [Open] Daniel: Look at how we want to localize (non console) strings for coreboot. Long term project.
  * 2023-11-01
    * [Started]Martin: Shallow submodules - document & test, then update submodules if testing goes well. 
Additionally look at whether the .branch option helps.
      * We can save over 900MB by using shallow submodules.
      * [Projects & RFCs](https://docs.google.com/document/d/15H2m4swdESSgGaIuINOePkyst8b39Y7LulNPxkRb...).
      * Making progress - see email thread.
  * 2023-10-4
    * Martin: Write a tutorial for gerrit - Feel free to help.
[Started](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Z8igNdgBG5_Qlr4kKRtlbpKaZo9RUghRqZjHUNUO...).
    * [Open] OSFF: Look into making a video about using gerrit.
      * Discussed with Christian who felt this was a good plan.
      * Look at next year.
    * [Open] Martin: Write a document about vendorcode submodules.

## Minutes

### [Martin/Felix] Switching to BigBlueButton.
  * The upcoming meeting in two weeks (02/21/24) will take place on BigBlueButton instead of Google
Chat. Further information will be published to the mailing list between Wednesday's meeting and the
following one.
  * New meeting link to join the leadership meeting:
    * https://bbb.sfconservancy.org/b/mar-sfn-e22-axi
    * For phone access, call [phone], then enter 89421 as the conference PIN number.
      * It looks like there’s only a USA phone number.

### [FelixS] Building a community FSP for Intel based platforms
  * Initial coreboot support for Intel consumer platforms mostly comes with Google Chromebooks.
  * coreboot support for a wide range of mainboards is only possible if Intel releases FSP binaries.
For some platforms Intel refuses to release a FSP binary and Intel also refuses to fix issues within FSP.
  * How to make coreboot more independent? People have tried convincing Intel to make FSP open
source. It seems unlikely that anything in that regard happens any time soon.
  * As a compromise, I am proposing to build our own FSP from scratch that is built by the community,
specifically companies. It's still meant to be closed-source, since Intel won't allow us to write
open source code, but then we are able to extend and improve it whenever we want.
    * Will Intel allow us to distribute our own binaries if the code is completely written by ourselves?
  * Possible issues
    * Getting a multi-party NDA
      * [Werner] First of all we need an entity which could be the NDA partner (OSFF could probably be?)
    * Getting a license so that we are allowed to distribute it
    * [Werner]The license that comes with the FSP code that I am aware of explicitly inhibits code
changes and productive use of self-built binaries. How would we ensure  this?
      * [FelixS] AFAIK the standard license allows us to do code changes but it doesn’t allow us
distributing the binary over let’s say a website. So I am wondering if it’s different with
something we build ourselves.
  * [Sheng] Do you have connections with Intel folks to make this happen or initiate the discussion?
Is there a solid plan for this, to outline the goals, process, and details with Intel? Or is this
just a mere suggestion that is probably not very practical? Since this is not an Intel specific
issue, how about AMD? This won't happen overnight - who is going to lead this initiative with
Silicon vendors, initiate discussions and meetings (and it will be a difficult and consuming
process), collect feedback from all parties, and craft out a solid plan to move ahead?
  * [Martin] In coreboot’s agreement with SFC, we agreed that any and all software and/or
documentation developed and maintained by the Project and the Project’s participants will be
distributed solely as Free Software.
    * Because of this agreement, while this proposed FSP could be interesting to the coreboot group,
it’s not, and cannot be, a coreboot project. Since we wouldn’t be able to open source the proposed
FSP, I’m not even convinced that it’s something that should be discussed in this meeting.
  * [Felix S.] Just wants to hear the opinion of the coreboot community and not try to add this
project to coreboot’s projects
  * [Jonathan H] It would be hard to get manager support since it’s not open source.
  * [Jay T] A separate license is required for release. The FSP needs to be identified as non-intel.
  * [Nico] We can focus on FSP-S and publish everything that doesn’t have to be secret as open
source. What does intel feel about this?
    * [Martin]: if we’re doing it as open source, why do it as FSP, why not just do it as coreboot?
  * David: Look at getting a consortium of companies to sit down with intel and try to work with them
to make FSP better. This can’t be done privately, cutting intel out of the loop.
  * Werner: OSFF is ready to take over things like this instead of doing it as a consortium.
Intel has typically even rejected the idea of joining the OSFF to do something like this.
  * David: Start with contacting intel. I can put Felix in touch with someone from intel.
  * Sheng: Try building on top of Subrata’s success: 75% of FSPS is getting moved to the platform firmware.
  * https://blog.osfw.foundation/breaking-the-boundary-a-way-to-create-your-own-...
    * Incorporate Fiano tool as part of Intel coreboot build process to remove the unused FSP modules during build time. 
That will help to shrink the FSP-S binary by 75%. For the rest of the 25%, the community can start poking around it by trying to implement those as part of native coreboot code.
    * Resume the work on LibGFXinit. If LibGfx driver is production ready, then we could further shrink
FSP-S by removing the graphic init module from it.

### [Arthur] Status update on ARM LBBR bootflow (was asked last meeting)
  * Nothing to discuss so not sure if this needs to be on the agenda.
    * Things are progressing along with the LBBR Engineering Change Request to include other bootflow
recommendations where coreboot is BL1
    * It’s an industry wide spec, so a wide range of partners were asked for input, which takes time
  * [Martin] We were told in a previous leadership meeting back in October or November that the
decision of what to include in the spec would be made at a meeting in January, which is why we
pushed so hard to get the decision about the ARM coreboot solutions to be wrapped up.
    * As far as it being on the agenda, I think even letting us know that things are just progressing
but not resolved yet is information that should be shared instead of just leaving people wondering
what’s going on.
    * When should we expect an actual update? June? December? 2025?
      * [Sheng] No idea..you know how big corporate’s meetings go.. People in the meeting keep asking
more questions. As ARM has a wide range of ecosystem partners, and they want to be heard. We are
also wondering and equally frustrated, but nothing within 9elements control, we already did our
best as possible and keep putting in more resources to help resolve the questions from Arm
partners.. Just want to be very cautious here that we did not promise fast approval, but the CB
decision was crucial to kickstart the discussion and help to accelerate the process. Hopefully ARM
SystemReady will finalize the decision in the coming months. Will share more when we have updates.
    * When are the patches in question expecting to be merged?
      * [Sheng] As per I got the confirmation and agreement from leadership in the meeting that with the conditional approval, 
the patches will be merged immediately after we got confirmation from ARM that the proposed coreboot->TFA is included in the LBBR spec. If the condition changes then will need to bring it up again.

### [Elyes] revert & get rid of write{8,16,32,64}p  (readXXp? ).
  * See Julius’s comment here : https://review.coreboot.org/c/coreboot/+/80193.
  * Julius: There’s a reason we use void pointers - we want to practice good hygiene and use the
correct types for variables.
  * FelixH: In some cases you have #defines for different MMIO addresses. You need additional
typecasts in the code for this.
  * Werner: Adding the typecast indicates that the developer is doing this intentionally.
  * David: Something in linux coding guidelines about not hiding pointers as typedefs. This is in the same vein.
  * Felix & Nico - Agree that removing these will make the code more cluttered.
  * MaxB: No reason to have these functions - It just hides the typecast. So what if it adds just a bit of clutter.
  * David: I’d stick with the older format.
  * Werner: I’m with David - just cast the variable properly.
  * David: This could also create a bad precedent.
  * David: Fix the variables that are being passed in rather than casting them?
    * We’d like one implementation instead of two. Let’s make a decision about what we want to use.
    * Let’s figure out where the variables are created and see why they’re created with an incorrect type.
  * FelixH: Get stats of the usage of the different function types. Suspects that most values are
actually uintptr_t.

### [Martin] coreboot 24.02 release in just under 2 weeks
  * Release planned for February 19, 2024.

### [SimonG] Coreboot Control Block again
  * [Link](https://review.coreboot.org/c/coreboot/+/77712).
  * Julius doesn’t feel that the benefit is not worth the maintenance cost.
    * CBFS is the main alternative. CCB should either have its own file or use one of the existing
  * Wener Zeh, Matt Deviller and David Hendricks generally approve to get this feature in.

# Next meeting
  * February 21, 2024.
    * [Meeting link](https://bbb.sfconservancy.org/b/mar-sfn-e22-axi).
    * [coreboot Calendar](https://coreboot.org/calendar.html).

# Notice
  * Decisions shown here are not necessarily final, and are based
on the current information available. If there are questions or comments
about decisions made, or additional information to present, please put
it on the leadership meeting agenda and show up if possible to discuss
it.
Of course items may also be discussed on the mailing list, but as it's
difficult to interpret tone over email, controversial topics frequently
do not have good progress in those discussions. For particularly
difficult issues, it may be best to try to schedule another meeting.

# coreboot leadership meeting minutes
  * [2024-02-07](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NRXqXcLBp5pFkHiJbrLdv3Spqh1Hu086HYkKrgKj...).