[coreboot] TALOS project short of funding goals - where to now?

[Taiidan at gmx.com]

I am incredibly sad that TALOS has not gotten the required cash flow, 
short of a miracle in the next few days.

The coreboot project is pretty much dead in the water without it, the 
only real choices for further development are either super low power 
crappy ARM devices or always going to be expensive IBM/TYAN POWER 
servers, so what do we do?

I am wondering, how come they didn't bark up some government or 
corporate trees for TALOS funding? AFIAK there are various government 
agencies interested in secure hardware and assured computing; I have 
always wondered what the NSA uses for their own computing needs, maybe 
they paid intel for firmware source code and a system that doesn't need 
ME to run.

The way things are going:
+10 years - Microsoft and Intel have announced the "PrivaSec" 
initiative, aimed at producing a secure vertically intergrated computing 
platform where firmware agents prohibit the execution of unapproved 
programs - protecting your data from unauthorized access.

+20 years - We're sorry, but the GlobeX Trade Agreement and the Secure 
Communities act of 2035 prohibit the viewing, copying or transmission of 
this file - Further violations may result in fine, arrest and or the 
revocation of your work permit and internet operators license.


Thoughts:
It seems that so many linux people just don't really care about libre 
anything, considering that the average linux sysadmin makes over $100K 
per year the community could have easily funded the project.

These days there are a lot more people with skills, but without the 
computer enthusiast/hacker culture of the 90's, the kind of hypocritical 
people who use a macbook, facebook, etc but who chide me for saying that 
working for the government is not at all immoral.

If I wasn't unemployed I would happily pay $5K for a high performance 
libre computer, but not everyone is me.

People went nuts for the faux libre purism laptop but talos gets hardly 
any comparative publicity/hype - why? - "We'll get intel to open up ME 
one day, we promise!"