[olpc-software] Which BIOS will OLPC have ?

[Jim Gettys]

On Mon, 2006-06-05 at 22:30 +0530, Sunny Sachanandani wrote:

> Does this mean we will need non-free code in the OLPC? 

Fundamentally, I don't know the answer to this question in regards to
the BIOS at this moment, as I was trying to explain.

AMD has told me they will give us access to anything they can; we just
don't know yet if we'll need to use parts in the emulation layer that
they don't have the copyrights to and are able to re-license.

> I certainly wouldn't 
> like any closed source code for things like VESA emulation and
> SMI/SMM .
> 
> Can we hack around the GX2 fbdev driver?

The fbdev driver isn't an issue: it is part of the solution.  It is a
normal Linux GPL kernel driver, and gets us away from depending on VESA
emulation.  Then we won't need a VESA emulation module in the BIOS.

Time will tell if there are other modules we need that can't be
re-licensed.  I don't have that information right now.

Regards,
                            - Jim

-- 
Jim Gettys
One Laptop Per Child