Greetings,
I have been shopping around for a laptop during the past few weeks, aiming for a mix of performance and privacy. During my search, I came across a blog post by mrnuke: - https://web.archive.org/web/20150223201313/https://blogs.coreboot.org/blog/2...
(the post was referenced in a Qube OS discussion related to Anti Evil Maid: https://groups.google.com/g/qubes-users/c/sEmZfOZqYXM/m/j5rHeex1BAAJ)
I've noticed that this post has disappeared from Coreboot's blog, and that Coreboot now advertises Purism quite differently. From https://www.coreboot.org/users.html: "Purism manufactures security focused laptops designed chip by chip to work with free/libre and open source software. Purism laptops are the only independently-made, brand new, high-performance laptops on the market specifically meant to pair recent technologies with coreboot and a neutralized Intel Management Engine."
I also came across Purism's public answer: https://puri.sm/posts/about-purism-and-librems-and-cake/
I guess the change in Coreboot's stance can be explained in a few manners: - Purism genuinely improved since 2015 and is now delivering on their promises, - mrnuke's opinion never reflected Coreboot's opinions, - Purism extended a "helping" hand to Coreboot, in order to align both parties' economical objectives,
From an external viewpoint, I'd say that Purism has improved on their delivery, and their narrative seems to be grounded in reality rather than smoke and mirrors. (Even though they currently admit to still having some binary blobs here and there)
Can you please provide more context, and indulge in the curiosity of a random user ?
(Disclaimer: I do not intend to buy a Purism laptop, not because I think they are bad, but because I'll have a more "Do It Yourself" approach)
Best regards, Alexandre (a security/privacy enthusiast)
Alexandre,
wow, your historical excavation is quite impressive and a fun trip down memory lane.
Some context here: The blog post was a single user's opinion and was not coordinated with the coreboot project in any way, which is what led to its removal in February of 2015. It certainly was never the coreboot project's stance at any point in time. Of course as an open source community, members of that community have a diverse set of opinions that may or may not align with the overall stance.
I am not personally following how well Purism is doing or has been doing in the last 8 years, nor is there much outcome or insight to be expected from judging what marketing claims were made at the time or what ambitions and dreams and plans were made back then, almost a decade later.
My opinion is, and I hope that I am still speaking for the coreboot community here, that anybody trying to improve the situation out there w.r.t. availability of Open Source firmware products should be welcome to do so without being criticized for not solving the ecosystem problems that are not their fault. It is generally a better approach to investigate the things that can be changed, and iteratively keep working on them.
All the best, Stefan
On Sun, Jun 11, 2023 at 11:43 AM Alexandre Janvrin via coreboot < coreboot@coreboot.org> wrote:
Greetings,
I have been shopping around for a laptop during the past few weeks, aiming for a mix of performance and privacy. During my search, I came across a blog post by mrnuke:
https://web.archive.org/web/20150223201313/https://blogs.coreboot.org/blog/2... (the post was referenced in a Qube OS discussion related to Anti Evil Maid: https://groups.google.com/g/qubes-users/c/sEmZfOZqYXM/m/j5rHeex1BAAJ )
I've noticed that this post has disappeared from Coreboot's blog, and that Coreboot now advertises Purism quite differently. From https://www.coreboot.org/users.html: "Purism https://puri.sm/ manufactures security focused laptops designed chip by chip to work with free/libre and open source software. Purism laptops are the only independently-made, brand new, high-performance laptops on the market specifically meant to pair recent technologies with coreboot https://puri.sm/coreboot/ and a neutralized Intel Management Engine."
I also came across Purism's public answer: https://puri.sm/posts/about-purism-and-librems-and-cake/
I guess the change in Coreboot's stance can be explained in a few manners:
- Purism genuinely improved since 2015 and is now delivering on their
promises,
- mrnuke's opinion never reflected Coreboot's opinions,
- Purism extended a "helping" hand to Coreboot, in order to align both
parties' economical objectives,
From an external viewpoint, I'd say that Purism has improved on their delivery, and their narrative seems to be grounded in reality rather than smoke and mirrors. (Even though they currently admit to still having some binary blobs here and there)
Can you please provide more context, and indulge in the curiosity of a random user ?
(Disclaimer: I do not intend to buy a Purism laptop, not because I think they are bad, but because I'll have a more "Do It Yourself" approach)
Best regards, Alexandre (a security/privacy enthusiast) _______________________________________________ coreboot mailing list -- coreboot@coreboot.org To unsubscribe send an email to coreboot-leave@coreboot.org
As the former lead coreboot developer for Purism, I would TLDR as such:
The 2015 blog post you linked was the viewpoint of one individual, and referred to Purism's initial crowdsource-funded laptop, which shipped with a Nvidia GPU and proprietary firmware. Since then, every Purism device shipped has coreboot firmware available (though the first two did not have it at release). Purism has also heavily invested in their downstream version of HEADS, called PureBoot, which leverages a hardware key to enable tamper detection of the device firmware and /boot partition, as well as open-source EC firmware for their current model laptop.
-Matt / MrChromebox
On Sun, Jun 11, 2023 at 1:43 PM Alexandre Janvrin via coreboot < coreboot@coreboot.org> wrote:
Greetings,
I have been shopping around for a laptop during the past few weeks, aiming for a mix of performance and privacy. During my search, I came across a blog post by mrnuke:
https://web.archive.org/web/20150223201313/https://blogs.coreboot.org/blog/2... (the post was referenced in a Qube OS discussion related to Anti Evil Maid: https://groups.google.com/g/qubes-users/c/sEmZfOZqYXM/m/j5rHeex1BAAJ )
I've noticed that this post has disappeared from Coreboot's blog, and that Coreboot now advertises Purism quite differently. From https://www.coreboot.org/users.html: "Purism https://puri.sm/ manufactures security focused laptops designed chip by chip to work with free/libre and open source software. Purism laptops are the only independently-made, brand new, high-performance laptops on the market specifically meant to pair recent technologies with coreboot https://puri.sm/coreboot/ and a neutralized Intel Management Engine."
I also came across Purism's public answer: https://puri.sm/posts/about-purism-and-librems-and-cake/
I guess the change in Coreboot's stance can be explained in a few manners:
- Purism genuinely improved since 2015 and is now delivering on their
promises,
- mrnuke's opinion never reflected Coreboot's opinions,
- Purism extended a "helping" hand to Coreboot, in order to align both
parties' economical objectives,
From an external viewpoint, I'd say that Purism has improved on their delivery, and their narrative seems to be grounded in reality rather than smoke and mirrors. (Even though they currently admit to still having some binary blobs here and there)
Can you please provide more context, and indulge in the curiosity of a random user ?
(Disclaimer: I do not intend to buy a Purism laptop, not because I think they are bad, but because I'll have a more "Do It Yourself" approach)
Best regards, Alexandre (a security/privacy enthusiast) _______________________________________________ coreboot mailing list -- coreboot@coreboot.org To unsubscribe send an email to coreboot-leave@coreboot.org
Thank you Matt, Stefan for your answers,
Yes, I'm quite new to coreboot (I'm only aware of its existence since last year).
I have a lot of catching up to do, hence the historical digging :).
Your answers make a lot of sense.
I wasn't aware that PureBoot was a Heads distribution, but from what I've read on their "Librem key" gitlab, this too makes sense (I've only just scratched the surface there as well, so I'm a long way of understanding it all).
I'll keep on reading then!
Regards,
Alexandre
------- Original Message ------- On Sunday, June 11th, 2023 at 21:11, Matt DeVillier matt.devillier@gmail.com wrote:
As the former lead coreboot developer for Purism, I would TLDR as such: The 2015 blog post you linked was the viewpoint of one individual, and referred to Purism's initial crowdsource-funded laptop, which shipped with a Nvidia GPU and proprietary firmware. Since then, every Purism device shipped has coreboot firmware available (though the first two did not have it at release). Purism has also heavily invested in their downstream version of HEADS, called PureBoot, which leverages a hardware key to enable tamper detection of the device firmware and /boot partition, as well as open-source EC firmware for their current model laptop.
-Matt / MrChromebox
On Sun, Jun 11, 2023 at 1:43 PM Alexandre Janvrin via coreboot coreboot@coreboot.org wrote:
Greetings,
I have been shopping around for a laptop during the past few weeks, aiming for a mix of performance and privacy. During my search, I came across a blog post by mrnuke:
(the post was referenced in a Qube OS discussion related to Anti Evil Maid: https://groups.google.com/g/qubes-users/c/sEmZfOZqYXM/m/j5rHeex1BAAJ)
I've noticed that this post has disappeared from Coreboot's blog, and that Coreboot now advertises Purism quite differently. From https://www.coreboot.org/users.html: "Purism manufactures security focused laptops designed chip by chip to work with free/libre and open source software. Purism laptops are the only independently-made, brand new, high-performance laptops on the market specifically meant to pair recent technologies with coreboot and a neutralized Intel Management Engine."
I also came across Purism's public answer: https://puri.sm/posts/about-purism-and-librems-and-cake/
I guess the change in Coreboot's stance can be explained in a few manners:
- Purism genuinely improved since 2015 and is now delivering on their promises,
- mrnuke's opinion never reflected Coreboot's opinions,
- Purism extended a "helping" hand to Coreboot, in order to align both parties' economical objectives,
From an external viewpoint, I'd say that Purism has improved on their delivery, and their narrative seems to be grounded in reality rather than smoke and mirrors. (Even though they currently admit to still having some binary blobs here and there)
Can you please provide more context, and indulge in the curiosity of a random user ?
(Disclaimer: I do not intend to buy a Purism laptop, not because I think they are bad, but because I'll have a more "Do It Yourself" approach)
Best regards, Alexandre (a security/privacy enthusiast) _______________________________________________ coreboot mailing list -- coreboot@coreboot.org To unsubscribe send an email to coreboot-leave@coreboot.org
I do want to point out the elephant in the room however, and that is the Intel ME firmware, which is still present and active (without it, the silicon won't be in a state where it could initialize the main cores). If you want a truly libre firmware system you'll need to look outside of the x86 ecosystem. If you're OK with the Intel ME firmware (e.g. if you just want to scratch some itches further up the firmware stack / run Windows), then the Purism is a reasonable choice.
----- Original Message -----
From: "coreboot" coreboot@coreboot.org To: "Matt DeVillier" matt.devillier@gmail.com, "stefan k reinauer" stefan.k.reinauer@gmail.com Cc: "coreboot" coreboot@coreboot.org Sent: Monday, June 12, 2023 12:21:28 PM Subject: [coreboot] Re: Coreboot's stance on Purism since 2015: What changed ?
Thank you Matt, Stefan for your answers,
Yes, I'm quite new to coreboot (I'm only aware of its existence since last year).
I have a lot of catching up to do, hence the historical digging :).
Your answers make a lot of sense.
I wasn't aware that PureBoot was a Heads distribution, but from what I've read on their "Librem key" gitlab, this too makes sense (I've only just scratched the surface there as well, so I'm a long way of understanding it all).
I'll keep on reading then!
Regards,
Alexandre ------- Original Message ------- On Sunday, June 11th, 2023 at 21:11, Matt DeVillier matt.devillier@gmail.com wrote:
As the former lead coreboot developer for Purism, I would TLDR as such:
The 2015 blog post you linked was the viewpoint of one individual, and referred to Purism's initial crowdsource-funded laptop, which shipped with a Nvidia GPU and proprietary firmware. Since then, every Purism device shipped has coreboot firmware available (though the first two did not have it at release). Purism has also heavily invested in their downstream version of HEADS, called PureBoot, which leverages a hardware key to enable tamper detection of the device firmware and /boot partition, as well as open-source EC firmware for their current model laptop.
-Matt / MrChromebox
On Sun, Jun 11, 2023 at 1:43 PM Alexandre Janvrin via coreboot < [ mailto:coreboot@coreboot.org | coreboot@coreboot.org ] > wrote:
Greetings,
I have been shopping around for a laptop during the past few weeks, aiming for a mix of performance and privacy. During my search, I came across a blog post by mrnuke:
- [
https://web.archive.org/web/20150223201313/https://blogs.coreboot.org/blog/2... | https://web.archive.org/web/20150223201313/https://blogs.coreboot.org/blog/2... ] (the post was referenced in a Qube OS discussion related to Anti Evil Maid: [ https://groups.google.com/g/qubes-users/c/sEmZfOZqYXM/m/j5rHeex1BAAJ | https://groups.google.com/g/qubes-users/c/sEmZfOZqYXM/m/j5rHeex1BAAJ ] )
I've noticed that this post has disappeared from Coreboot's blog, and that Coreboot now advertises Purism quite differently. From [ https://www.coreboot.org/users.html | https://www.coreboot.org/users.html ] : " [ https://puri.sm/ | Purism ] manufactures security focused laptops designed chip by chip to work with free/libre and open source software. Purism laptops are the only independently-made, brand new, high-performance laptops on the market specifically meant to pair recent technologies with [ https://puri.sm/coreboot/ | coreboot ] and a neutralized Intel Management Engine."
I also came across Purism's public answer: [ https://puri.sm/posts/about-purism-and-librems-and-cake/ | https://puri.sm/posts/about-purism-and-librems-and-cake/ ]
I guess the change in Coreboot's stance can be explained in a few manners:
- Purism genuinely improved since 2015 and is now delivering on their promises,
- mrnuke's opinion never reflected Coreboot's opinions,
- Purism extended a "helping" hand to Coreboot, in order to align both parties'
economical objectives,
From an external viewpoint, I'd say that Purism has improved on their delivery, and their narrative seems to be grounded in reality rather than smoke and mirrors. (Even though they currently admit to still having some binary blobs here and there)
Can you please provide more context, and indulge in the curiosity of a random user ?
(Disclaimer: I do not intend to buy a Purism laptop, not because I think they are bad, but because I'll have a more "Do It Yourself" approach)
Best regards, Alexandre (a security/privacy enthusiast) _______________________________________________ coreboot mailing list -- [ mailto:coreboot@coreboot.org | coreboot@coreboot.org ] To unsubscribe send an email to [ mailto:coreboot-leave@coreboot.org | coreboot-leave@coreboot.org ]
coreboot mailing list -- coreboot@coreboot.org To unsubscribe send an email to coreboot-leave@coreboot.org
-
Alexandre Janvrin -
Matt DeVillier -
Stefan Reinauer -
Timothy Pearson