[coreboot] Documentation creation for the coreboot wiki - what to do?

[Taiidan at gmx.com]

On 01/28/2017 08:48 PM, Martin Roth wrote:

> On Fri, Jan 27, 2017 at 5:16 PM, Taiidan at gmx.com <Taiidan at gmx.com> wrote:
>> I would like to know as to how much we are allowed to indicate that x86
>> OEM's are generally hostile to the FOSFW movement? I don't want to ruffle
>> any feathers, as these days they are already significantly ruffled.
> Hi Talidan,
>    My personal opinion here is that you're incorrect.  I don't think
> that they're hostile at all.  I think that the corporations don't see
> the value in catering to the few people who are interested in
> completely open firmware.  They're trying to solve issues, and the
> solutions that they've chosen just happen to completely lock out third
> party firmware.
>
> If you want to change that, I'd say that you have to be noticed, and
> noticed in a POSITIVE light.  If the coreboot community just complains
> about the current situation, we're not going to get anywhere.  There
> are plenty of people at these companies who feel the same way that we
> do about these sorts of issues, and we only make it harder by saying
> that the OEMs are 'hostile' or 'evil'.  They aren't - they're just
> looking to create value for their shareholders by leveraging
> synergistic solutions.  Or something like that.  :)
>
> So while this is just my opinion, I'd recommend just keeping to the
> facts about the issues, and not going beyond that.  Feel free to point
> out the issues that Intel's bootguard or AMD's PSP present for us, but
> I'd try to refrain from anything beyond that.  If you do want to go
> beyond that, please make it plain that it's coming from you as an
> individual, and may or may not reflect the coreboot community as a
> whole.
>
> If we want to change things, we need an argument that makes sense to
> the companies we want to change - Something financial.
>
> Martin
>
The only issue is that there won't be a free firmware community in a few 
years due to the actions of intel and AMD as there is no way to shut off 
boot guard or ME/PSP.
I don't consider a system with FSP/MRC/ME to be "free" firmware as 
coreboot does hardly anything in that situation.

AMD used to be chill, they released the AGESA code - but then they took 
it closed source again....I would really like to know why.


IMO getting intelligence agencies and major corporations involved in the 
free firmware movement is what will save it,  assured computing is all 
the rage these days - china and russia are making their own CPU designs 
and DARPA is interested in hardware verification. What corporation that 
deals with sensitive IP wants a black box supervisor processor (magic 
backdoor) on their every device?

They currently do not know how much they need it, let us hope that will 
change.