[coreboot] BadBIOS Thoughts

[Patrick Georgi]

Am 17.11.2013 21:46, schrieb Alex:
> [Broken record warning] What if, somehow, the community gathered a few
> brains, talked to a vendor, and convinced them to put coreboot on a
> yet-to-be-released product? It would almost seem like the community
> would do most of the work for free. What sort of responses have we
> received in the past with this approach? System 76, ThinkPenguin,
> Pudget, etc... have we tried any of them? They have sleek systems, and
> at least the first two value openness more than the average.
Those three list Intel based notebooks only (not even a token AMD device).
 From the point of view of free firmware, all of them are unsuitable, 
since free (and open, and trustable) Intel firmware implementations are 
only available for museum class^W^Wlong-term support hardware.

I think the only x86 notebook with completely free firmware these days 
that can be bought easily is
http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/product/ibm-lenovo-thinkpad-x60-coreboot/
(featuring those Intel museum chips)

And I guess doing something like that group is the only working approach 
for now: Pick some notebook (something recent), free its firmware, sell 
the pre-modded boxes (and publish numbers!).
If you manage to sell significant volumes (which shouldn't be all that 
large), that might turn some heads.

There are some issues with this approach: You're limited in your choice 
of base hardware (likely AMD/Via chipsets only, the EC must be 
manageable with reasonable effort) and it must be available for some 
time (no fun doing a port for 2 months, then selling the notebook for 
another 4, after which it's taken off the market, and you have to start 
from scratch).
And, of course, when doing this, you carry the usual entrepreneurial risk.


Patrick