for more working mainboards

[Mike]

treacherous computing, like amd trustzone...
http://www.arm.com/products/processors/technologies/trustzone/index.php

... could spawn all over.  We have to stop this by giving end users more 
purchasing choice.

Someone suggested that fsf actually produce mainboards without it. 
Sounds like a plan.  Is fsf up to it?  Are they willing to sign NDAs?

If not, then we should start a company to do the mainboards.  Producing 
amd/intel/etc boards.

The current coreboot code would be fully applicable, and the mainboards 
would ship with coreboot.  At least, coreboot might disable trusted 
computing functionality.

Agree?

[Patrick Georgi]

Am 27.08.2014 um 13:44 schrieb Mike:
> Someone suggested that fsf actually produce mainboards without it.
> Sounds like a plan.  Is fsf up to it?  Are they willing to sign NDAs?

Questions to the FSF should be posed on FSF channels, not ours.
> If not, then we should start a company to do the mainboards.  Producing
> amd/intel/etc boards.

"we" typically means "someone else should do it".
> At least, coreboot might disable trusted computing functionality.

If it may.

Patrick

[Mike]

On 08/27/2014 08:03 AM, Patrick Georgi wrote:
> Questions to the FSF should be posed on FSF channels, not ours.

ok
> > If not, then we should start a company to do the mainboards.  Producing
> > amd/intel/etc boards.
>
> "we" typically means "someone else should do it".

Let's split up "doing it" into 3 parts: purchasing equipment/software,
spending time, and signing NDAs.  Which of these is problematic?  NDAs?

-Mike

[ron minnich]

I was talking to a friend about this the other day.

Back when I were a mere lad, one could buy chips and build boards with
CPUs that were every bit as good as what any company could sell you. I
interned at HP working with engineers on boards, and I saw both sides,
the company and the garage/basement. There was not a lot of
difference. I built boards with many different microprocessors, and
even designed DRAM controllers. It was doable.

I got a chance to watch the very talented engineers in the chromebook
part of Google for two years.After a few months watching them fix
problems that were very subtle, I found myself realizing that the era
of the Apple ][ was gone for good. I just don't see how "we can build
our own mainboards" model gets you to high quality, fast, low power
boards. I'd love to be shown wrong. But this "we should start a
company" thing that has been appearing in this list for 15 years is
now less practical than it was in 2000.

Sorry, I don't like it either.

If you really want a high quality, blob-free, open platform, you're
probably best off with ARM, and a good  choice is the new Acer 13:
coreboot, no blobs, and it's really fine hardware at least for me.

ron

[David Hendricks]

On Wed, Aug 27, 2014 at 4:44 AM, Mike  wrote:
> If not, then we should start a company to do the mainboards.  Producing
> amd/intel/etc boards.

You're in luck, some enterprising people already did:
http://www.gizmosphere.org/why-gizmo/gizmoboard/
http://www.minnowboard.org/