[info] [linux-elitists] Gutsy Gibbon to include strictly-free branch

[Eugen Leitl]

----- Forwarded message from Dave Crossland <dave at lab6.com> -----

From: Dave Crossland <dave at lab6.com>
Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2007 19:04:06 -0700
To: Greg KH <greg at kroah.com>
Cc: linux-elitists at zgp.org
Subject: Re: [linux-elitists] Gutsy Gibbon to include strictly-free branch

On 16/04/07, Greg KH <greg at kroah.com> wrote:
>> takes an ultra-orthodox view of licensing: no firmware, drivers,
>> imagery, sounds, applications, or other content which do not
>> include full source materials and come with full rights of
>> modification, remixing and redistribution. There should be no
>> more conservative home, for those who demand a super-strict
>> interpretation of the 'free' in free software. This work will
>> be done in collaboration with the folks behind Gnewsense."
>
>Hm, to do this properly it should only boot if you have linuxbios
>installed, but what's the odds that people will realize that...

That depends how nasty proprietary BIOS behave...

"Intel EFI is a DRM bios, since it has unlimited control of your
memory and I/O, and implements a full network stack. So the BIOS can
veto your I/O, and report your being veto'd over the network. By
design. I know people at banks who are very unhappy with this. They
thought they were running GNU/Linux and knew what the whole thing was
doing.

A few years ago Intel were explaining the cool EFI stuff, how EFI can
download a new version of the BIOS and burn it to flash, on its own.
They explained how convenient this is - but chaos went off when the
banks heard about this. For the banks, like LANL, when we buy a
consumer machine, we either demand full, buildable, source code to
their BIOS, or that they ship LinuxBIOS, now."
- http://understandinglimited.com/2007/04/15/fosdem-2007-notes/

If you care about freedom, you'll be aware of this  problem, and your
next motherboard will be something listed on
http://linuxbios.org/Supported_Motherboards - the Gigabyte M57SLI-S4
is the current favourite, and FSF sysad Ward Cunningham has written
http://linuxbios.org/M57SLI-S4_Build_Tutorial

-- 
Regards,
Dave
_______________________________________________
linux-elitists mailing list
linux-elitists at zgp.org
http://allium.zgp.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/linux-elitists

----- End forwarded message -----
-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE