[1]GNU Boot is a "100% free software project aimed at replacing the non-free boot software" and is a downstream of Coreboot, GRUB, and SeaBIOS. While priding itself on being "100% free", last December they had to [2]drop some motherboard support and CPU code after discovering they were shipping some files that are non-free by their free software standards. Today they announced another mistake in having inadvertently been shipping additional non-free code.

GNU Boot discovered an issue with non-free code affecting not only them but also some of the Linux distributions that pride themselves on being fully free software / 100% open-source. This latest snafu they say is "more problematic" than their prior non-free code discover due to impacting the free software Linux distributions too.

[3]

The issue at hand though comes down to test data contained within the archive and that containing non-free code in the form of microcode, BIOS bits, and Intel Management Engine firmware.

Today's [4]announcement explains:

"The vboot source code used in Coreboot and in the vboot-utils package available in many GNU/Linux distributions contains nonfree code in their test data in tests/futility/data (nonfree microcode, nonfree BIOS, nonfree Management Engine firmwares, etc)."

So from a user perspective, not as worrisome unless being a free software purist as ultimately it amounts to bundled test data.

In any event they have re-spun their latest releases to avoid these non-free code bits. [5]This commit makes the change to remove all the assets from the offending directory.



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/search/GNU+Boot

[2] https://www.phoronix.com/news/GNU-Boot-Drops-Non-Free-Bits

[3] https://www.phoronix.com/image-viewer.php?id=2024&image=gnu_boot_broken_lrg

[4] https://savannah.gnu.org/news/?id=10684

[5] https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/gnuboot.git/commit/?h=0.1-rc1-2&id=f5d4cb6a20405f95bcc937ddc994367d86bc8aae