OFW access from linux

[Mitch Bradley]

Martin Dengler wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 11:18:17AM +0800, Mitch Bradley wrote:
>   
>> It is gratifying that so many people like the idea of being able to zap 
>> back into OFW from Linux - especially since I got such intense pushback 
>> when I first proposed leaving OFW resident on OLPC.
>>     
>
> Why?  Security reasons?
>   

Other than "it uses some memory and every byte is precious", a lot of 
the objections were of the ilk "I wouldn't use it so it's not useful".

It seems to me that some fraction of kernel developers have an attitude 
that "some BIOSes have given us a lot of trouble therefore anything in 
the BIOS realm sucks and firmware is not to be trusted and the only true 
and blessed code is in the Linux kernel".

That's obviously a caricature, but I think it conveys an undercurrent of 
thought that exists at some level.


> Martin
>
>