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Intel to open source EFI firmware code
Intel has announced that it will be releasing its "foundation code" implementing the extensible firmware interface (EFI) specification. This release raises the prospect of having a system with a completely free BIOS. CollabNet will be handling the actual release, which is due "later this year."
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A no to Microsoft only PCs ? Posted Jun 2, 2004 16:27 UTC (Wed) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link] " Under the CPL, any change in the Foundation code itself and the development kit made by one company will be visible and available to all..."Does this mean that any change made by Microsoft in the core of EFI, to implement their NGSCB/Paladium scheme, must also be open sourced ?!... Can anyone enlight how this CPL works, is it an almost copy of the LGPL ?... This is very fishy!!!... Microsoft participating in a collaborative community effort!?... hmmm... what where they smoking!?... or is just plain fear settling in ?!... or is just nothing and Microsoft can anyway lock-in to themselfs a hardware platform by extending the core EFI with modules ?!... Some Goverments (in fear of espionage ?), namely China as it seeems, must had twisted a harm or two... but i belive the hard mangement line inside Microsoft must now be taking sleeping pils because of the grief of had to participate in "REAL" Open Source... what an Anti-FUD opportunity ;-)
Oh please give us a break. Posted Jun 2, 2004 16:52 UTC (Wed) by jzhao (guest, #2865) [Link] What the hell does China government have anything to do with this?!
Oh please give us a break. Posted Jun 2, 2004 19:10 UTC (Wed) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link] Perhaps nothing... perhaps everything...But its really of no importance now that the damn thing is going out as open source... and is really very counterproductive to argue with a hard scepticism that only belive in random cause-effect pairs... the all universe is too much full of a subtil and underlying order and purpose (intelligence ?) that escape all cientific tagging, to discuss "subtilitys" in a least importance issue like this one... Yes you "probabily" are right on the replay to this very one post... but nothing new... i've been enough "theorectly" tagged and flamed about my allusions to Ma$ter behind SCO a year ago, to even bother now.
Oh please give us a break. Posted Jun 2, 2004 22:30 UTC (Wed) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] Your problem is mainly, I think, one of expression. It is hard to understand what you want to say. This is an English-speaking forum, so you should be careful with that. Use a dictionary (Konqueror has a nice built-in one since 3.2), and try to express ideas one at a time.I am a foreign speaker myself, and I know how hard it is to put ideas through in a foreign language (if that is indeed your case): quite often they just don't get through. Links and quotes help too.
Oh please give us a break. Posted Jun 3, 2004 20:34 UTC (Thu) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link] WellThanks !!
Welcome YA free BIOS project Posted Jun 2, 2004 16:44 UTC (Wed) by aaron (guest, #282) [Link] ...to join LinuxBios (which has been working for years) and OpenBIOS (almost there after years of work).I was disppointed with EFI when I worked with it on IA64 boxen. It operated like a lame and defective MS-DOS commandline, and required a specific partition format and a specially-labeled FAT partition from which to load the kernel or second-stage bootloader. Heck, for the versions I used, if you wanted it to try one boot device, fail, then try another, you're screwed. It was a real letdown after having worked with OpenFirmware, with its hardware abstraction and FORTH extensibility. Embedded GRUB, anyone? Oh, well, beaujolais to Intel for opensourcing it.
Welcome YA free BIOS project Posted Jun 2, 2004 19:55 UTC (Wed) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link] I belive thats the all "Bull" in this issue we could discuss, the reasons behind this move of the openly declared nš1 enemy of the Linux/FOSS movement...... perhaps this EFI project was so Microsoft centered,... and being so..., so fundamentaly broken, that Microsoft and Intel decided to experiment with a real open source method to see if it can be fixed... ... and that shift is remarkable from any way you look at it, more even so because is such a fundamental "piece of code"...if it can't boot you can't even debugg... ... i dont trust Microsoft, and my "felling" is that nobody should, but if they start to push it heavly with Intel, then we cant bet that every motherboard manufactor is going to have it... so how safe is to "participate" and "focus" in it ?... Linux on EFI, how is going to be ?... Simple fair questions that tryes to focus on the "Bull", instead of the "waving tail" of tagging conspiracys.
Welcome YA free BIOS project Posted Jun 2, 2004 22:10 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] i dont trust MicrosoftBut this is Intel.
Welcome YA free BIOS project Posted Jun 3, 2004 9:41 UTC (Thu) by XERC (guest, #14626) [Link] .., the Micro$oft's strategic alliance partner.Not to mention, Intel is a CLOSED hardware provider.
Intel to open source EFI firmware code Posted Jun 3, 2004 13:23 UTC (Thu) by ccchips (guest, #3222) [Link] This kind of thing is definitely a step in the right direction.It shouldn't be long until we see commonly-available computers with "monitor" software again. This is something I really missed when the vendors started replacing it with a Microsoft product (GWBasic in ROM.) I've always wanted a good, solid set of diagnostic tools bundled with the hardware. The fact that this part (the boot process) is being shuttled to FOSS is a great start!
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