I’ve been addicted to these podcasts lately. I started with the Johnathan Blow episode, but I’ve been working my way up from the bottom. Learning about both computing and the people involved has been really informative and entertaining, and that’s for someone who has never subscribed to a podcast series before. Bryan Cantrill is a surprisingly adept interviewer.
We prefer all pieces of the firmware to be open-source; but can accept an ME and FSP binary blob for x86 architectures.
[…]
The blobs must be in a binary format. No additional C code, assembly files or header files are acceptable.
It seems a little weird to me to go to all the trouble of ignoring C but then saying “Also we totally want big binary management engine blobs! If Rust folks didn’t spend so much time complaining about C’s lack of security and safety that’d be one thing, but this is really hypocritical to both get rid of C and then be open to massive malware blob injection.
oreboot will only target truly open systems requiring no binary blobs. For now, that means no x86.
Your quote is from the very bottom, in a section that is explicitly about x86. I suppose that sounds like they don’t really target it, but people ask for it so “here’s an FAQ statement”
Okay, okay, that’s technically off-topic, but…
Can we talk about the awesome project name?
It’s cool on two levels because ores are often oxides.
It’s a masterpiece! I love this level of creativeness, especially nowadays when everyone slaps an “.io” or “d” at the end of their projects’ names.
Ron Minnich’s interview with On The Metal is great too: https://oxide.computer/blog/on-the-metal-3-ron-minnich/
I’ve been addicted to these podcasts lately. I started with the Johnathan Blow episode, but I’ve been working my way up from the bottom. Learning about both computing and the people involved has been really informative and entertaining, and that’s for someone who has never subscribed to a podcast series before. Bryan Cantrill is a surprisingly adept interviewer.
Agreed! Great guests, great interviewers. Don’t miss out on the show notes, they’re usually packed with a lot more supporting material.
This is neat!
The difference with how coreboot handles blobs is a little troubling though:
It seems a little weird to me to go to all the trouble of ignoring C but then saying “Also we totally want big binary management engine blobs! If Rust folks didn’t spend so much time complaining about C’s lack of security and safety that’d be one thing, but this is really hypocritical to both get rid of C and then be open to massive
malwareblob injection.Their main statement at the top is
Your quote is from the very bottom, in a section that is explicitly about x86. I suppose that sounds like they don’t really target it, but people ask for it so “here’s an FAQ statement”
This take makes a lot of sense. Thanks!
They start by saying no x86…but then they go on to talk about x86. It was easy for me to misread. :(
Yeah, it really is! :)