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Open Firmware is now freeOpen Firmware is now freePosted Nov 17, 2006 21:39 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954)In reply to: Open Firmware is now free by hollis Parent article: Open Firmware is now free
Regardless of familiarity with the language, I don't see how Open Firmware is better than Grub. I'd rather have just enough code in ROM to load the next stage from a more mutable device, which is what we typically have today. A big part of what OF is is pluggable device drivers to let you boot from lots of different kinds of devices. I'd rather just see a program that can boot from only one kind of device -- a removeable, standard, USB flash drive. You can put as much intelligence on that drive as it takes to boot the next stage from whatever you want, so instead of today's POST or OF, I would probably put a tiny Linux on it. In some cases, I wouldn't even need a next stage. With such a small initial program, people wouldn't have much interest in seeing its source code or updating it; it would be equivalent to code inside the network adapter, but even less interesting.
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Open Firmware is now free Posted Nov 18, 2006 17:33 UTC (Sat) by hollis (subscriber, #6768) [Link] It's not that Open Firmware is "better" than GRUB. It's that if you have open source firmware (be it BIOS, Open Firmware, or "other" like u-boot), GRUB is unnecessary.
Don't forget that flash is mutable.
The "small initial program" you talk about is an accurate description of today's BIOS or Open Firmware, yet for some reason many people are interested in open source firmware instead. Firmware access would mean we could fix bugs and add features instead of awkward workarounds at higher levels of software. For example, we could add an LVM driver to the firmware itself, and not have to worry about loading successive "stages" like GRUB must resort to.
Open Firmware is now free Posted Nov 20, 2006 4:41 UTC (Mon) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] It's not that Open Firmware is "better" than GRUB. It's that if you have open source firmware (be it BIOS, Open Firmware, or "other" like u-boot), GRUB is unnecessary. OK. But I sensed that was being used as a argument in favor of switching to Open Firmware from what we have today. I don't think it's a good argument. In fact, even if I had Open Firmware, I'd probably have it load Grub from my disk.
The "small initial program" you talk about is an accurate description of today's BIOS or Open Firmware I meant to refer to something smaller than today's BIOS and much, much smaller than Open Firmware. I can understand why people want an open source alternative to the BIOS boot loader we have now, but if it were as small as I would like, I don't think they would care that it's closed source. For example, we could add an LVM driver to the firmware itself I would rather add an LVM driver to something more mutable than flash, such as the standard USB flash drive I mentioned. That's why I don't care if I have open source firmware (if "firmware" means what lives in the flashable read-only memory that sits in the main address space at boot time).
Open Firmware is now free Posted Nov 27, 2006 20:23 UTC (Mon) by jimwelch (guest, #178) [Link] >> I don't think they would care that it's closed source.
I care about closed source for all the normal open/close reasons. The main reason's that affect me:
1. BUGS - some of my "old" computers don't do big disks.
Most of this is just not cost effective under the ancient proprietary system in use today for BIOS.
Open Firmware is now free Posted Nov 28, 2006 7:04 UTC (Tue) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] I care about closed source for all the normal open/close reasons. The main reason's that affect me: Those are all good reasons to care about closed source of today's BIOS, but not relevant to the point to which you are responding. That point is that with a small initial program instead of what we have today, people wouldn't care about having its source code. Such a boot program wouldn't be involved in any of the issues you list. Getting back the OF question: The reasons listed are not only good reasons to have open source for the code that handles those things, but also for being able to update that code easily, for example with a 'cp' shell command instead of an arcane BIOS flash procedure. And in a way that if you screw it up, you can easily repair the damage. Open Firmware doesn't do any better than today's BIOS in those areas, and in fact is worse because there's so much more code in there that you'll want to update.
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