[Dev] libreboot-utils, moving forward.

[Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli]

On Mon, 26 Dec 2022 09:12:41 +0200
Wael Karram <wael at waelk.tech> wrote:

> On Sat, 2022-12-24 at 11:55 -0500, bill-auger wrote:
> > On Sun, 18 Dec 2022 01:42:14 +0100 Denis wrote:
> > > Since that nonfree
> > > software will not be removed anymore, we won't be able to use the
> > > newer tarballs.
> > > 
> > > I'm already in discussion with other people to continue a libre
> > > version of Libreboot. 
> > 
> > that could be a mksource PKGBUILD - parabola could provide a
> > pre-cleaned source-ball; but those patches would be carried and
> > maintained forever, so that solution is essentially soft-forking
> > libreboot
> > 
> > > for some of the boards it supported before like the KGPE D16.
> > 
> > ok, now i am more convinced that the new libreboot direction is
> > not well aligned with parabola - AFAIK, the D8 and D16 are the
> > only powerful servers which can boot the original no-blobs
> > libreboot; and these are libreboot's only significant targets
> > besides thinkpads - if such important targets are no longer
> > supported, i would be inclined to put the entire project into
> > maintenance-mode, rather than shifting the meaning of "libre" to
> > accommodate the ever-worsening lost cause that is x86 - does
> > libreboot support any other than x86? - maybe it's day has
> > passed, and it is just not needed any more
> > 
> > put another way, it just seems that x86 precludes "moving
> > forward" in a libre direction - to me, "moving forward" means
> > looking away from x86 toward ARM, RISCV, and POWER9 - at least
> > those arches are trending toward libre-friendly, rather than away
> 
> Specifically about D8 and D16 I know that the issue is upstream
> dropping support.
> https://mail.coreboot.org/pipermail/coreboot/2018-April/086618.html
> Here is some of the discussion on that.
> I presume someone can fork off of Coreboot and maintain it if that
> hardware is needed, and maybe that fork can be merged back into
> upsteam. But at least since 2018 these boards have been dropped.
> Since Libreboot didn't have a stable release since 2016 - the latest
> release(s) had these boards vanish.
An association already applied for NLnet funding to bring that
mainboard back into Coreboot. We don't know yet if that funding will be
accepted or not.

Libreboot also has the infrastructure to use different coreboot
versions or patches for different computers. So for instance the
payloads and so on can at least be updated.

Denis.
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