[coreboot] Supported laptops (again), treacherous computing

[Oliver Schinagl]

On 07/30/13 18:43, ron minnich wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 30, 2013 at 2:39 AM, Stefan Reinauer
> <stefan.reinauer at coreboot.org> wrote:
>
>> No, but it comes with an 8k signed, binary primary bootloade that loads
>> coreboot from flash.
>>
>
> in other words, the days when we could have 0 binary blobs are fast ending.
Actually, the Allwinner sun[4567]i series come with a LIKLEY GPL 
violating bootloader in ROM (which loads u-boot atm). While coded in 
hardware, we could at some point get sources for it.

Why likley? We know that the BROM and their own (now GPL released) 
secondary (boot0) and tertiary (boot1) are build from the same source 
base. Defines give it away. boot[01] where released under the GPL 
because they where in violation by copying some trivial functions, from 
u-boot, but still. Our limited research shows that BROM could very well 
be infringing as well. The Allwinner SoC could be the first fully free 
SoC with 0 binary blobs. With lima (Mali GPU) and cederus (cedarX VPU) 
we could even have fully opensource userspace without any binary blobs!

So yes, the days are comming sooner rather then later ;)

>
> I don't like that either. But I don't create the chips.
Technical, this is acceptable by RMS's reasoning. It's firmware that 
cannot be modified, it's not really software in the chip, but just an IP 
core I suppose.

>
> ron
>