Hi everybody,
I heard about a project interested int creating coreboot compatible open hardware. While that effort isn't ready to make any announcement, questions came up about where to host such a project.
There's lots of open hardware out there already, but it's often based on not-quite open base boards so there seems to be a hole in the ecosystem approximately the shape of open hardware designs that could serve as base for hardware of all sizes (SBC alikes to put "shields" on, laptop/desktop designs that can be customized, maybe even servers, ...)
That's where coreboot.org might come in: When I brought up the question in today's leadership meeting, people were generally interested in having coreboot.org host projects like that.
The idea isn't to create "coreboot branded" hardware, because that makes as much sense as "UEFI branded" hardware (that is, none), but to provide a place where people can cooperate on and publish open hardware designs that are complex enough to require coreboot-style firmware.
Thoughts? Patrick
Hi Patrick,
what does "coreboot compatible open hardware" means here? Do we have some kind of specification for this or does that "just" means no blobs at all?
I would think that we can definitely host such a projects, give it a gerrit, docs and stuff - but I would be aware of leveraging resources for this. I don't think that we should promote this in any way or brand it as coreboot compatible open hardware.
Best,
Chris
On 9/23/20 7:54 PM, Patrick Georgi via coreboot wrote:
Hi everybody,
I heard about a project interested int creating coreboot compatible open hardware. While that effort isn't ready to make any announcement, questions came up about where to host such a project.
There's lots of open hardware out there already, but it's often based on not-quite open base boards so there seems to be a hole in the ecosystem approximately the shape of open hardware designs that could serve as base for hardware of all sizes (SBC alikes to put "shields" on, laptop/desktop designs that can be customized, maybe even servers, ...)
That's where coreboot.org might come in: When I brought up the question in today's leadership meeting, people were generally interested in having coreboot.org host projects like that.
The idea isn't to create "coreboot branded" hardware, because that makes as much sense as "UEFI branded" hardware (that is, none), but to provide a place where people can cooperate on and publish open hardware designs that are complex enough to require coreboot-style firmware.
Thoughts? Patrick
coreboot mailing list -- coreboot@coreboot.org To unsubscribe send an email to coreboot-leave@coreboot.org
On Thu, Sep 24, 2020 at 01:06:13PM +0200, Christian Walter wrote:
what does "coreboot compatible open hardware" means here? Do we have some kind of specification for this or does that "just" means no blobs at all?
No specification as yet, I wrote that email with the intent to start a discussion that may lead to a spec :-)
As for what "coreboot compatible" means: I think hardware designs hosted on coreboot.org should be able to run an upstream coreboot build. Depending on how you look at it, the terminology might not be entirely right: It may be more correct to say that coreboot has to be compatible with open hardware designs that we host (and that we expect the open hardware maintainer to ensure that.)
The only exception might be firmware development related tooling, if we were to create a subproject with a wide mandate that also covers such "related tools" like a SPI mux board. If we should do that is another open question, by the way - but more of a follow-up.
I would think that we can definitely host such a projects, give it a gerrit, docs and stuff - but I would be aware of leveraging resources for this. I don't think that we should promote this in any way or brand it as coreboot compatible open hardware.
If we were to host projects that are open hardware implementations of parts that are traditionally (with only a few notable exceptions) closed (such as SBCs, laptop/desktop/server mainboards), why shouldn't we promote them?
And if they run coreboot, why shouldn't we say that? (I'm not saying that open hardware designs should come with our Hare logo on the silk screen)
Regards, Patrick
Patrick Georgi via coreboot wrote:
And if they run coreboot, why shouldn't we say that? (I'm not saying that open hardware designs should come with our Hare logo on the silk screen)
They certainly could, and maybe they should if they consume coreboot.org infrastructure, or are in general designed for coreboot?
//Peter
-
Christian Walter -
Patrick Georgi -
Peter Stuge