On Sun, Sep 13, 2009 at 01:54:33PM -0700, Seth Goldberg wrote: > > > Quoting Robert Millan, who wrote the following on Sat, 12 Sep 2009: > >> On Fri, Sep 11, 2009 at 02:07:10PM -0700, Seth Goldberg wrote: >>> >>> I strongly disagree with you in this specific case. Our experience in >>> Solaris has demonstrated that PXE firmware is surprisingly robust (when >>> the right combination of API calls (i.e. those tested by Windows) are >>> used). We have been successfully using PXE-based firmware for netbooting >>> for many years now, and we would like to continue to do so. Maintaining >>> a driver collection for NICs is futile, IMHO. Using the firmware that's >>> there, and that's reliable should be the goal. Not all firmware is our >>> enemy :). >> >> Reliing on proprietary firmware is a compromise. We don't install the blobs >> ourselves, so we're not responsible for them, but it is still problematic >> because user has less freedom (firmware bugs is just the most notable >> consequence of this). >> >> So our compromise is to use firmware when we have no other choice, or when >> the alternative is not reasonable (e.g. not mature or complete enough). >> >> My goal as maintainer is to encourage development of a usable and complete >> driver framework. I'm open to discussion about accepting code for using >> hardware support from firmware, but keep in mind it's not our primary goal. >> >> In the specific case of network hardware, I'm more reluctant because it's >> a regression compared to what we had in GRUB Legacy. > > I agree that choice is very important. In this case, our choice is to > rely on PXE firmware, since we've had excellent experiences with it. We > added an UNDI network driver to legacy GRUB, so from our perspective, not > having PXE in GRUB2 is the regression :).
Well, you have the freedom to disagree with anything we do and bring your customized GRUB to a different direction :-) Anyhow, my priority for GRUB is strong driver-based support. We could recruit someone to develop the framework in next year's GSoC (unless somebody steps in, of course). -- Robert Millan The DRM opt-in fallacy: "Your data belongs to us. We will decide when (and how) you may access your data; but nobody's threatening your freedom: we still allow you to remove your data and not access it at all." _______________________________________________ Grub-devel mailing list Grub-devel@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel
