On Sun, Jun 13, 2021 at 9:45 AM Marcin Juszkiewicz wrote: > Let me bring the idea on this list that, maybe, it is time for vendors > to start looking into moving away from using good old U-Boot on microsd > or similar to provide on-board SPI flash to store bootloader. So we > could stop distributing special installable images for platforms like > the Pi.
Storing boot firmware on the board seems to encourage various sub-optimal things. Fully proprietary bootloaders. GPL violating bootloaders. Bootloaders containing blobs. Bootloaders that are locked down and cannot be replaced at all, especially on mobile. Forks of random snapshots of existing bootloaders. Personally I would go the other way; there should be a standard boot protocol between the SoC boot ROM and later layers of the boot process and vendors should stop shipping any boot firmware beyond the SoC boot ROM, leaving it to OS distributors to package mainline bootloaders that support that protocol. -- bye, pabs https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise
