Open Source Firmware Conference

https://www.osfc.io/

by pabs3 • 3 years ago

209 44 3 years ago

osfc.io

sargegood• 3 years ago

What’s the point of this link? The conference has come and gone. Is there a way to view videos of talks or something?

kqr2• 3 years ago

Most likely the talks will be available soon via their archive:

https://www.osfc.io/archive/2022/

You can also view past talks.

It also spreads awareness so people can attend the conference next year.

snvzz• 3 years ago

Odd not to see opensbi there.

bobse• 3 years ago

They all use proprietary conference hardware in the venue, right? Open source projector? Microphones? Audio systems?

hutzlibu• 3 years ago

They probably also did not drive there with their open source cars. What exactly is your point?

pierat• 3 years ago

It's a purity war that 'perfect' is the only thing that matters. The comment also has strong vibes of 'Mister Gotcha' from The Nib.

https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/

atoav2• 3 years ago

What is your point? Do you like to imply being involved with open source is hypocritical unless you are using it 100% of your life?

That tells me more about you than it does about them. You must walk through your life extremely carefully not to do things that are inconsistent with each other.

If you rent a venue a lot of the tech needed for a conference is already going to be there — and for such a conference they will not have a ton of choices. Secondly open hardware is not very established in the conference hardware space. The reason for that are multiple, but one has to do with the fact that most of the gear requires extremely specialized build chains or equipment and you'd have to compete with decades of R&D and optimized manufacturing processes.

Your open source SM58 is going to be more expensive and less reliable unless you invest decades into it. To get out an okay microphone. Can you tell me why anybody should in your opinion be doing that in their spare time?

necovek2• 3 years ago

While I agree it's unavoidable to use non-open hardware, someone out there should be investing in an open SM58: that is the only way for smaller shops to compete with the likes of Shure. Building together and ensuring no-paperweight-if-you-go-out-of-business will reassure some of your potential customers and speed up your development.

Brian_K_White• 3 years ago

I think I must have been 3 or 4 years old when I fully got the concept that even 3 out of 10 is better than 0 out of 10, and worth doing. Then maybe somewhat later but still not recently when I got the similar concept that even if you need all 10 components of a system before you get the payoff, you still have to build up the individual bricks one at a time if you ever even want a chance at maybe getting all 10.

Even in a security context where on one hand it's true that the tiniest pinhole is all it takes, it's also true that there is no such thing a no pinholes, and yes, 80% coverage, even 10% coverage, is better than 0% coverage.

It's a goal and an ideal not an absolute.

squarefoot• 3 years ago

Priorities. You start with open chips and firmware, then when you have them you push for their adoption in currently closed devices.

_factor• 3 years ago

We may end up with a simple open source implementation surrounded by a number of paid upgrades.

necovek2• 3 years ago

For a long time, GUADEC, Gnome User and Developer Conference, was supported for video recording by Collabora and other smaller free software companies which did the heavy lifting in Gstreamer too (a/v framework that's the base for GNOME apps). My apologies if I am misrepresenting who did what, maybe it was Igalia or another company: this was 15-20 years ago.

How much of the actual video recording equipment was coming with free firmware — probably none — does not change the fact that these are people improving the situation rather than just accepting that the hardware you buy is at the mercy of the original vendor.

BolexNOLA• 3 years ago

I work in video/audio production so a lot of my work ends up venn diagramming with events. Especially media projection/delivery at events. Sound systems, projectors, etc.

When you organize a conference on a location, you are using what they have on site or at best your laptop is hooked in. You have way too much to worry about to bring all your own hardware and to build out the entire media infrastructure conference in a hotel or convention space or wherever you are holding the event. That’s assuming you’re even allowed to access the areas in systems that would allow you to implement your own!

That is an unbelievably laborious task that is unreasonable to put on basically any group. At best weeks of work/installs on top of all the other massive logistic issues you’re handling. If they have a Windows terminal for you to show your presentation, you’re not going to rebuild everything from the ground up just so you can show some static images on open source software/machines. It’s just not reasonable.

spease• 3 years ago

Bold of you to assume they didn’t just skip the need for firmware entirely and go with analog audio and an overhead projector with transparent slides.

pgeorgi5• 3 years ago

Worse: Nearly 100% of that open source firmware is running on proprietary hardware! (and the really tiny epsilon that isn't - doesn't matter)

trinsic27• 3 years ago

This looks more like a boot security event[0] rather than open firmware. Does anyone know of any other events that actually talk about open firmware implementations?

[0] https://www.osfc.io/archive/2022/

bcantrill3• 3 years ago

OSFC is not just boot security at all! For an example of past talks that do not hit on boot security at all, see (e.g.) [0] and [1].

[0] https://www.osfc.io/2021/talks/on-hubris-and-humility-develo...

[1] https://www.osfc.io/2022/talks/i-have-come-to-bury-the-bios-...

trinsic27• 3 years ago

I'm sorry, this looks more about securing the boot for embedded devices and not really related to user control of firmware and preventing closed source code that takes away freedom/spy's on the user. The program of day one is below:

Main Room OSFC 2022 Opening Event

Christian Walter , Philipp Deppenwiese Open firmware on your infrastructure, not only for hyperscalers.

Erwan Velu Talk details: Open firmware on your infrastructure, not only for hyperscalers. Introduction to VBE - Verified Boot for Embedded

Simon Glass Talk details: Introduction to VBE - Verified Boot for Embedded Tillitis Key - A USB security key inspired by measured boot and DICE

Fredrik Stromberg , Sasko Simonovski , Michael 'MC' Cardell Widerkrantz The “Thing” Around Your System Firmware

Christian Walter , Subrata Banik Talk details: The “Thing” Around Your System Firmware Protecting TPM Commands from Active Interposers

Jordan Hand Talk details: Protecting TPM Commands from Active Interposers FirmwareBleed: The industry failures to adopt SMM mitigations introduced years ago

Alex Matrosov , Philipp Deppenwiese Talk details: FirmwareBleed: The industry failures to adopt SMM mitigations introduced years ago I have come to bury the BIOS, not to open it: The need for holistic systems

Bryan Cantrill Talk details: I have come to bury the BIOS, not to open it: The need for holistic systems Linux as a UEFI bootloader and kexecing windows

Trammell Hudson Talk details: Linux as a UEFI bootloader and kexecing windows How Min Platform led to Max coreboot; a case study

ronald g. minnich Talk details: How Min Platform led to Max coreboot; a case study

kfreds3• 3 years ago

The OSFC is a great event with a friendly community. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in open source firmware.

I'm beyond impressed with the hard work and passion of its participants. Many of them have worked tirelessly for years on advancing the state of open source firmware in the industry. Some of them have been at it for decades.

Everyone I've spoken with at the event clearly recognize how critical open source firmware is to ensuring platform reliability, resiliency and user control.

distract8901• 3 years ago

Open source firmware for what though?

I'm gonna assume this is PC firmware based on the list of players, but I haven't been able to find any conclusive information on the website.

Super annoying when groups like this use an extremely generic term for something very specific and just assume the entire world knows what they mean.

kfreds3• 3 years ago

Open source firmware for what though?

The conference's scope is open source firmware in general, as implied by its name.

I'm gonna assume this is PC firmware based on the list of players, but I haven't been able to find any conclusive information on the website.

The landing page lists ARM as one of the sponsors. The same page also features a list of projects that are represented at the conference. Quotes from their landing pages follow:

- coreboot is ... on modern computers and embedded systems.

- Trusted Firmware provides a reference implementation of secure software for Armv8-A, Armv9-A and Armv8-M.

- The OpenBMC project is a Linux Foundation project whose goal is to produce a customizable, open-source firmware stack for Baseboard Management Controllers (BMCs).

- "oreboot for ARM", "oreboot for RISC-V HiFive Unleashed"

- Welcome to TianoCore, the community supporting an open source implementation of the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI).

- u-bmc is a Linux OS dist ... tailor made for baseboard management controllers.

- U-Boot mentions on their landing page too many architectures and vendors to list here, but here's a few: ARC, M68K, MIPS, Xtensa.

dromtrund• 3 years ago

Odd not to see Zephyr mentioned at all, it's got way more activity than most (all?) of the projects listed, and many of the sponsors are actively involved.

awsation• 3 years ago

Noticed a workshop about that during the last day. Would be great if the conference material gets posted for reference, slides, recordings, anyone know if that's the case ?

unixhero• 3 years ago

Oh it has already been held. What a bummer, I would definitely have attended that.

pabs32• 3 years ago

A list of open firmware projects:

https://wiki.debian.org/Firmware/Open

Open Source Firmware Conference

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