Article A Hardware enthusiast view on the usefulness of open source Firmwares like Coreboot

[zir_blazer]

I'm posting to blatantly self-advertise this: https://zirblazer.github.io/htmlfiles/coreboot.html?ver=123

I took my time to write the linked Wall of Text® with the purpose of educating/influencing Hardware enthusiasts communities about the need to push for open source Firmwares, and perhaps with even more luck, Motherboards with open Hardware designs. These are my personal thoughts and nearly all the input I have on this matter. If you read it, you will know almost as much as I do about it.

You will notice that there is a major difference regarding my approach and nearly everyone else that you have read talking about this matter previously. I'm not of the "INTEL ME/AMD PSP VIOLATES MY PRIVACY!1!1!1" and "THE NSA AND USA GOVERMENT ARE SPYING ON ME!" crowd. I have an actual agenda regarding functional issues where I think that an open source Firmware could kick propietary Firmware butt, and I cover it with enough detail as to drive that point.

 

[zir_blazer]

I simply do not see a huge benefit to this. Just sounds like a lot of hopes something better is made, that it is free or affordable, that it works and finally that it doesn’t cause some other problem down the road.

If everyone thought like you do, Linux wouldn't even exist, and Microsoft together with Apple would hold an absolute duopoly over consumer Operating Systems with no alternative whatsover.

I'm a firm believer that some people has to learn the hard way, and that means suffering with a lot bad experiences, just like I did. On every damn Motherboard I ever purchased, I was handicapped in one way or another due to Firmware bugs or lack of features, and that is what pushed me to think that I can't trust Firmware maintenance to a Motherboard vendor that just gets money on further Motherboard sales, because there isn't an incentive to keep working on them. So, when you get a perfectly fine Motherboard not supporting a new Software-level feature that could be implemented with a simple Firmware update because the Motherboard vendor wins nothing from backporting it to an older line, nor they are going to support you to do it by yourself, make sure to remember this Thread and that you said that you don't see a benefit.



On other news, finally the FOSDEM 2021 video from the "Open Source Firmware status on AMD platforms 2021" is FINALLY available:

https://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/fosdem/2021/D.firmware/firmware_osfsoap2.webm

A few highlights:
- AMD AGESA v9 can be currently directly integrated with TianoCore (edk2) to produce a mostly open source UEFI implementation, albeit the AGESA part remains closed sourced. Implementing it this way is unrelated to Coreboot.
- AMD hired a few Coreboot engineers that are implementing support for Cezanne and Majolica (I don't know what this one is, maybe a Dali successor?) upstream. Probably for Chromebooks.
- He mentioned the previous talk from Coreboot founder (Now currently at Google) about pure open source support of EPYC Rome in oreboot. The problem is that while he managed to boot a Rome with no binary blobs, it only has pretty much CPU, RAM, and low speed interfaces like Serial Port for console. The PCIe Root Complex and anything that depends on it aren't available yet, so it is far from production ready because a lot of major features still aren't supported, albeit it is still amazing that it can boot Linux on its current state.
- AMD also did some work on OpenBMC to support their reference EPYC platform.
- 3mdeb worked on an AGESA v9 + TianoCore port for the DFI GH960 (Ryzen Embedded V1000) in a DFI COM332-B COM Express Type 6 Carrierboard, which they plan to upstream on a few months and may be the first non-Chromebook Zen platform to get an open source Firmware (Albeit it is not Coreboot).
- They also mentioned their side project Dasharo, that is as of yet a bit hard to describe, but I interpret it as if they want to provide IBV (Independent BIOS Vendor)-level Firmware services based on Coreboot for continuous mainteinance and build testing of Motherboards using it.


We are slowing getting there...