[LinuxBIOS] Questions and thoughts on documentation

[Stefan Reinauer]

* Yuning Feng <fengyuning1984 at gmail.com> [070321 13:09]:
> I have been following the list for some time. From many posts I see developers
> spend much time hacking bits.
> Lack of essential documentation takes developer lots of time and makes things
> difficult.


> I know that many manufacturers are unwilling to give that information.
> Why is it so? 


They are scared people steal their "sillicon intellectual property".

> and what can people, who is concerned about this project, do on
> this documentation thing to help?

companies usually get the information easier. So if someone wants to do
a port, try to get hired by a company at least pro forma, so they can
legally grant you access to the information if you want to write a port. 
Make sure you are allowed to publish the resulting code afterwards.

> When developers choose a board to work on, that board may be a mainstream one,
> but when work is done, the board may become matured. Then most people cannot
> benefit from developers' hard
> work. That might be a problem?

lack of time is a severe problem, yes. We need lots more people being
able to hack support for new chipsets and boards. And we need to get to
a point where LinuxBIOS can become the default bios of a machine, so we
get the necessary support to implement new boards faster. 

One issue is, porting new boards is so time consuming that not many
people who actually can do it want to do it without being paid to do so.
And mainboard vendors often don't want to pay (their employees, or other
developers) to get new board supported. But for sure not older, cheaper
boards.

Stefan

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