OpenBIOS news.

[Andrew Kohlsmith]

I had lost this mailing list for a few months this summer and when I
finally do find it I find that there is something tangible to play
with.  Most excellent.  :-)

>    Daniel Engstroem told, that he would prefer "Generic Firmware" as name
>    for this project. This is sure a philosophical question, but I'd like
>    to see the word "Open" in our project name. As OpenFirmware is already
>    taken by the IEEE standard, I decided to use OpenBIOS. On the other
>    hand, what we want to do is not to write just another BIOS like MR
>    BIOS, Award BIOS, Ami BIOS, Phoenix BIOS, ... but something completely
>    new with the approach of being modern.

Personally I love the name OpenBIOS.  It kind of goes well with the
F-CPU.  Just because it has the acronym "BIOS" in it doesn't mean it
can't be something better than anything else with the same acronym.

> 6) I thought about writing email to some chipset manufacturers to ask
>    whether they want to participate in our project by writing free code
>    for their hardware. Does anyone have an idea what to write?

I would guess that the best method to target the chipset manufacturers
would be to indicate that by releasing the specifcations to their
chipsets they are making it available to MANY more people than they
would via an NDA or similarly closed agreement policy.  Look at
Apple/IBM...  As far as having the chipset manufacturers write
code...  I doubt they'd be interested...  that is what the databooks
are for, for someone *else* to use *their* hardware.  :-)  

As far as licensing goes, I agree that it should be licensed such that
it remains free and in the public domain no matter what gets done with
it.  I too am lacking in the license knowledge department, however.

Andrew