[coreboot] Source code for "Intel Firmware"

[Nico Huber]

On 10/7/18 10:10 PM, Philipp Stanner wrote:
> Am Samstag, den 06.10.2018, 07:50 +0300 schrieb Zvi Vered:
>> Currently, in order to replace vendor's BIOS we must take binary
>> parts
>> of the original bin file and then stitch it to coreboot.rom built
>> with
>> the coreboot project.
> 
> Well, exactly. Why do you think that is? Intel won't give you or anyone
> that code. Their policy seems to be to hide as much source code as
> possible.

At least since I'm working on the project it was always like this. And,
IMHO, it is a good thing. The only decent x86 coreboot code I know was
written when Intel didn't have their fingers in the pie. Without source
code available, people had to write clean code. If you compare this to
coreboot code that is closer to vendor code or was contributed by sili-
con vendors... there are some levels of quality and maintainability in
between.

So what we need is documentation not code, IMHO.

> I don't know why they contribute so much to the Linux Kernel, though…
> 
>> I want to depend only on Intel.
> 
> ?
> You do depend on Intel. You depend on them not doing awkward stuff on
> their machines (what they clearly do, running Minix within the whole
> "BIOS").

Minix runs on the Management Engine (ME). It's completely separate from
the "BIOS".

Nico