[coreboot] Proposal: "Freedom level" field for boards supported by coreboot

[Andrés Domínguez]

Sorry if my reply begins to be a little of topic or uninteresting.
Everyone has different company working experience, live in different
countries etc. and my suggestion was well intended so I want to
clarify the way I see this topic:

1) We all want more open systems like power8/9 or, even better, risc-v
to dominate the market from top to bottom.
2) Sure any sysadmin in San Jose, California, makes 100k+/year, most
IT workers in many countries don't remotely make that. Also, many
companies will not see a lot of increase in productivity buying more
expensive power8 computers.
3) Most users and companies want to buy modern, fast and inexpensive,
even if restricted/obscure, x86 systems. Because of this...
4) all major computer companies will use modern x86 for most of their
desktops and servers in the near future.
5) If users/companies see in the coreboot web page red "Pawned" for
all the systems that they would buy, this doesn't encourage to buy
coreboot supported boards.
6) If the companies selling a lot of coreboot computers (chromebooks)
think about using coreboot for their x86 computers (some could even
have similar hardware as their chromeos ones), they will prefer not be
listed in the coreboot page than marked in red as "Pwned".
7) Being able to run coreboot+seabios/depthcharge etc. instead of
proprietary BIOS should be displayed as positive, even if they don't
get a medal in freedom.
8) Encouraging the use of coreboot in restricted x86 systems will also
increase the visibility of the medals for the more free/trustful
systems.

Sorry for the long mail, and in case I don't write again next week,
Happy New Year!

Andrés

2017-01-20 0:52 GMT+01:00 Taiidan at gmx.com <Taiidan at gmx.com>:
> On 01/19/2017 06:16 PM, Andrés Domínguez wrote:
>
>> 2017-01-18 23:39 GMT+01:00 Timothy Pearson
>> <tpearson at raptorengineering.com>:
>>>
>>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>>> Hash: SHA1
>>>
>>> All,
>>>
>>> I've been working on a new way to classify boards supported by coreboot
>>> based on their freedom level.
>>
>> Very good idea.
>>
>>> I uploaded the classification criteria to
>>> the Wiki here
>>>
>>> https://www.coreboot.org/Board_freedom_levels
>>
>> There are a few things that I don't like about your categories,
>> specially the "scary red Pwned": Don't you think that people reading
>> the coreboot web page, will think that the "Pwned" are worse than
>> buying any random board not supported by coreboot, with the same
>> freedom issues? I would use not colored not named for the last
>> category. Gold, Silver and Bronze sound good to me, you could always
>> add Platinum and Iridium if more free boards appear and + or - for
>> every category that needs subcategories.
>>
>> I also agree with Julius about the ARM platforms that have not
>> supported GPU or WIFI. For many use cases GPU is not needed, and WIFI
>> can be replaced by PCIe or USB one.
>>
>> Andrés
>
> FSP coreboot isn't the real thing, it is almost absolutely pointless as it
> doesn't really do anything at all - we shouldn't entertain the purism idiots
> who support that.
>
>
> x86 is dead, in a year or so you won't be able to find any new non
> FSP/ME/PSP type motherboards so we will be reduced to buying overpriced used
> boards from ebay (kgpe-d16 - get em new while you can boys)
>
> At this point the only realistic option is a campaign to make libre one of
> the more affordable POWER8 systems, eventually they will come down in price
> and it'll be affordable (in 2012 a brand new kgpe d16 plus new cpu ram etc
> would be just as much as a lower end POWER8 is now)
>
> Unfortunate despite all the linux sysadmin's who are making 100K+ per year
> the authentic "hacker" culture[1] is nearly dead so nobody really cares
> about free firmware enough to cough up real money for to make it a reality,
> which is why TALOS failed.
>
> [1] people who work for facebook, google or another web 2.0 trendster
> company and who call themselves a "hacker" don't fall in to this category.