Documentation/index.md: Add coreboot's blob policy

Every now and then we have discussions about blobs and how and if they
should be introduced or handled. This patch adds a clear statement on
the project's view on this topic to avoid unclear situations in the
future.

Change-Id: I20bc0b345c129ecd59aa1190647d89f6d4e07d46
Signed-off-by: Werner Zeh <werner.zeh@siemens.com>
Reviewed-on: https://review.coreboot.org/c/coreboot/+/82086
Tested-by: build bot (Jenkins) <no-reply@coreboot.org>
Reviewed-by: Felix Singer <service+coreboot-gerrit@felixsinger.de>
This commit is contained in:
Werner Zeh 2024-04-25 08:01:55 +02:00 committed by Felix Singer
parent 21c9390d97
commit ce9562f662

View File

@ -139,6 +139,45 @@ Every now and then, coreboot is present in one way or another at
[conferences](community/conferences.md). If you're around, come and
say hello!
## Blob policy in the coreboot project
The goal of the coreboot project is to provide a FOSS firmware solution across
multiple CPU architectures, such as ARM, x86, and RISC-V. While fully open
source implementations for these architectures are encouraged and preferred,
we understand that a fully open implementation whereby every firmware component
is available as source code for modern platforms is not always feasible.
Different reasons inhibit the availability of fully open implementations,
including limited development resources, 3rd party license constraints of
IP blocks, or a legacy mindset of the silicon vendors.
It is important for the coreboot project to have support for modern CPU
platforms in order to provide a viable alternative for proprietary firmware
implementations. We do not have direct control over how hardware vendors design
their products, however we can provide an attractive alternative to the
expensive and complicated proprietary firmware model that exists today.
For modern platforms, we are largely dependent on the silicon
vendor to provide additional information on how to properly initialize the
hardware, as the required datasheets are often only available with an NDA.
Therefore, one possible way to have coreboot support for the latest platforms
is binary code (aka, a blob) provided by the silicon vendor. While we do
discourage this solution, it can be a door opener for coreboots support of a
given platform and thus keep coreboot functional on modern platforms. It is
clearly not the goal of the project to accept every blob a silicon vendor wishes
to use without question. On the contrary, each new blob needs to be examined
critically by the community, evaluating the need, risk, and alternative options.
Wherever possible, introducing new blobs should be avoided. That said, there
can be situations where a piece of code provided as a blob will enable the rest
of the fully open source firmware stack on a brand new platform. If blocking
this blob would lead to no support at all for the platform in question in
coreboot, this situation needs to be examined carefully. While these kinds
of discussion will be coordinated closely with the community (e.g. on the
mailing list or dedicated meetings), ultimately it is up to the leadership to
decide if there is no agreement between the community and the vendor pushing for
the new blob. This decision will be communicated on the mailing list.
Please see additionally
[coreboot binary policy](https://github.com/coreboot/blobs/blob/master/README.md).
## Getting the source code
coreboot is primarily developed in the