74 lines
3.2 KiB
Markdown
74 lines
3.2 KiB
Markdown
---
|
|
title: Free your BIOS today!
|
|
x-reviewed: true
|
|
...
|
|
|
|
### What is this? ####
|
|
|
|
GNU Boot is a free software project aimed at replacing the proprietary
|
|
boot firmware that comes with computers with free boot software.
|
|
|
|
### How this project came to exist ####
|
|
|
|
We believe computer users deserve to control all the software they
|
|
run. This belief is the key principle of the Free Software Movement,
|
|
and was the motive for developing the GNU operating system and
|
|
starting the Free Software Foundation. We believe computer user
|
|
freedom is a crucial human rights.
|
|
|
|
In order to achieve our goal, it is crucial that we call a program
|
|
"free" or "libre" only when it is indeed free in its entirety. When
|
|
we talk about specific programs, we must not muddle the facts about
|
|
what is free and what is not. If people start referring to a progran
|
|
as "libre," when parts of it are not in fact libre, that tends to lead
|
|
the community astray.
|
|
|
|
Unfortunately, such a muddle happened last year with a boot program
|
|
that was free software and is called Libreboot: the development team
|
|
added nonfree code to it, but continued to use "Libre" in its name.
|
|
|
|
Libreboot was first released in 2013. It has been widely recommended
|
|
in the free software community for the last nine years. In November
|
|
2022, Libreboot began to include non-libre code. We have made
|
|
repeated efforts to continue collaboration with those developers to
|
|
help their version of Libreboot remain libre, but that was not
|
|
successful.
|
|
|
|
Now we've stepped forward to stand up for freedom, ours and that of
|
|
the wider community, by maintaining our own version -- a genuinely libre
|
|
Libreboot, that after some hurdles gave birth to this project: GNU Boot.
|
|
|
|
### Our short term plans and need for help ###
|
|
|
|
We are seeking contributors for various jobs, both simple and technical.
|
|
|
|
The Libreboot name has a long history in the free software community.
|
|
Most occurrences of the uses were intended to refer to boot software
|
|
that was libre, and there is no way to edit those occurrences to refer
|
|
to libre boot software by a different name. Therefore, we need help
|
|
from the wider community to inform people about the inclusion of
|
|
nonfree software in the Libreboot releases.
|
|
|
|
Another way to help this project and take a stand for fully free
|
|
software is to change URLs across the web from <libreboot.org> to
|
|
<gnu.org/software/gnuboot>, to make sure that the mentioned software
|
|
is reliably free software.
|
|
|
|
You can also help our project by informing people about GNU boot or
|
|
other 100% free boot software.
|
|
|
|
While there is some documentation in our git repositories, we also
|
|
need help adding explanations on how to contribute, build and test
|
|
this website.
|
|
|
|
Adrien 'neox' Bourmault and Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli are the interim
|
|
maintainers of this GNU Boot project. They will also review patches
|
|
sent to the mailing list. Technoethical (an online shop that sells
|
|
hardware compatible with FSF certified distributions) and Libre en
|
|
Communs (a French nonprofit that acts and advocates for free software
|
|
and the commons) have offered help for testing releases.
|
|
|
|
Making this project part of GNU is part of our work to ensure that our
|
|
genuine Libreboot version remains free and continue to be maintained
|
|
over time.
|