Leah Rowe
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gnuboot.md
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fam15h.md
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censored-libreboot20230710.md
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safety.md
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% GNU Boot
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% Leah Rowe
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% 17 July 2023
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People have been waiting for me to break the silence about this. I go on about
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it on IRC. This article is intended to address it once and for all, offically.
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I waited so long, because until recently there really wasn't anything tangible
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to talk about; why talk about vaporware? Why indeed.
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Introduction!
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============
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This doesn't need to be an overly long post, so it won't be. There is a *fork*
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of Libreboot, named GNU Boot, which you can find here:
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<https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/gnuboot/>
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Unofficial GNU Boot 20230717 release
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------------------------------------
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If you want to skip the lecture, just read these first and re-visit this
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page (the one you're reading now) afterwards for more context:
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* GNU Boot 20230717, unofficial release (produced by *me*):
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<https://gnuboot.vimuser.org/news/gnuboot20230717.html> - based on the
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recent [Libreboot 20230625](libreboot20230625.md) release, but modified to
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comply with their policy, as best as I could approximate.
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Or generally: <https://gnuboot.vimuser.org/> - website, also unofficial.
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I call this unofficial fork *GNU Boot*, specifically because I want the work
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to be used *by* the real GNU Boot project. It is also clearly marked unofficial,
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on that website, so people don't get confused about that.
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These links, above, are for an *unofficial* fork of Libreboot that *I* have
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done myself, proposed for re-use by the new GNU Boot project. I am *not* a
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member of the GNU Boot project, but I do want to see it succeed.
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GNU Boot? What is that, you ask me? It is a fork of Libreboot by the GNU
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project, but it currently does not have a website and does not have any
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releases of its own. My intent is to *help them*, and they are free - encouraged -
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to re-use my work, linked above.
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GNU forked Libreboot?
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=====================
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Why?
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----
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They forked Libreboot, due to disagreement with Libreboot's [Binary Blob
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Reduction Policy](policy.md). This is a pragmatic policy, enacted in November
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2022, to increase the number of coreboot users by increasing the amount of
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hardware supported in Libreboot. Libreboot's [Freedom
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Status](../freedom-status.md) page describes in great detail, how that policy
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is implemented - the last few Libreboot releases have *vastly* expanded the
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list of hardware supported, which you can read [here](../docs/hardware/).
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I wish GNU Boot all the best success. Truly. Although I think their project is
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entirely misguided (for reasons explained by modern Libreboot policy), I do
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think there is value in it. It provides continuity for those who wish to use
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something resembling the old Libreboot project; some context:
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osboot
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------
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Previously, another project
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started by me named [osboot](https://web.archive.org/web/20220714144846/https://osboot.org/)
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existed - osboot, created in December 2020, ran for just under two years as
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a separate project, and it very much resembled what Libreboot is today.
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osboot was a fork of Libreboot, that I created *myself*, and maintained in
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parallel to Libreboot.
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osboot/libreboot merge
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----------------------
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In November 2022, I *shut down* osboot's website and redirected it to the
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Libreboot website, merging all of its documentation and additional code into
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Libreboot. Libreboot *adopted* OSBoot policy, verbatim. The [Binary Blob
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Reduction Policy](policy.md) *is* that policy - the [old Libreboot
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policy](https://web.archive.org/web/20221107235850/https://libreboot.org/news/policy.html)
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was declared obsolete, and abandoned - the main problem with it, and the problem
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with GNU Boot today which is based on it, is that it limited the amount of
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hardware that Libreboot could support.
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OSBoot was always the superior project, and Libreboot was practically dead,
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so I saw nothing to lose and just did it. I merged them together.
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So why talk about GNU Boot?
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===========================
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Ordinarily, I would ignore other projects; it's not that I'm bothered by them,
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it's just that I have Libreboot, which pleases me, and therefore I have no need
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to worry about the others. They can sort themselves out. I work collaboratively
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with a few other coreboot distros; for example, I sometimes provide advice or
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ideas to the [Heads](https://osresearch.net/) project (a very interesting
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project, superior to Libreboot in many ways). I recently helped them by offering
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to host tarballs for them, that they use in their build system.
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But that's just the problem: when GNU Boot first launched, as a *hostile fork*
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of Libreboot (at domain name `libreboot.at`), I observed: their code repository
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was based on Libreboot from late 2022, and their website based on Libreboot in
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late 2021. Their same-named Libreboot site was announced during LibrePlanet
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2023, by this video:
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<https://media.libreplanet.org/u/libreplanet/m/taking-control-over-the-means-of-production-free-software-boot/> -
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their speaker is Denis Carikli, an early contributor to Libreboot, who you can
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read about here: <https://libreplanet.org/2023/speakers/#6197>. Denis is one
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of the founders of that project.
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Well, now they are calling themselves *GNU Boot*, and it is indeed GNU, but it
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still has the same problem as of *today*: still based on very old Libreboot,
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and they don't *even* have a website. According to Savannah, GNU Boot was
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created on 11 June 2023. Yet no real development, in over a month since then.
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I have this itch in the back of my mind, that says: if you're going to do
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something, you should *do it*. When someone expresses disagreement with what
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I say, I can respect it if the it's more than just words. Which is precisely
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what they have been.
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I value *technical excellence*.
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So *why talk about it??*
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---------------------
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Simple: I've decided that I want to **help them**. Refer to the links above, in
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the early section of this article. I decided recently that I'd simply make a
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release *for them*, exactly to their specifications (GNU Free System
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Distribution Guidelines), talking favourably about FSF/GNU, and so on. I'm in
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a position to *do it* (thus scratching the itch), so why not?
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The most remarkable thing of all is this: in December 2022 is when I first
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learned of their supposed effort. They tried to poach several Libreboot developers
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behind my back,
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but none of them were interested it seems, and one of them leaked the existence
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of their effort to me. I knew *three months* before they announced that they
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were going to announce something, and I reliably predicted it'd be at LibrePlanet.
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The most absurd thing of that is: why did they not contact *me*?
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The GNU people should have simply contacted me from the start. I *would* have
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helped them. I did Libreboot releases under their policies for *years*, and I
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know what I'm doing. Ideology aside, I enjoy fun technical challenges; I have a
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wide depth of knowledge and expertise. *I offer it now*, as I have today, and
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will continue to do so. I offer my *support*, in service to it, even if I would
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personally never use nor recommend their project. One of the purposes of today's
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article is simply to tell people they exist, because I hope maybe they'll get
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more devs. They use the same build system as Libreboot, so Libreboot could even
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merge a lot of any actual code/ideas that they produce (and they can merge our
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work - *and I want them to do that*).
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There were/are more things to talk about, but I'm not really interested in
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writing more. Free as in freedom? Libreboot is a free software project, yet
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their propaganda says otherwise.
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GNU Boot is an [inferior](../policy.md#problems-with-fsdg) free software
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project, and Libreboot still provides the same blob-free configurations on
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mainboards when that is possible, so GNU Boot is also a *superfluous* project,
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just as Libreboot was before I merged osboot with it, but I digress.
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What more is there to say?
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Happy hacking!
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