From: Dan Pritts danno@internet2.edu
I just looked at that a few weeks ago - it doesn't seem to have reached critical mass. Would sure be nice.
Oh, it _has_ reached "critical mass" among a lot of embedded and application-specific capabilities.
But like most distribution channel issues, you can be sure that AMI, Phoenix and others are fighting it quite hard. Even Intel's so-called "open" initiatives are still in the "tight knit group" of BIOS vendors.
And Microsoft would love nothing more than to make it impossible to access system configuration outside of Windows, Windows systems unable to boot be damned. Most hardware vendors are _also_ more than happy to see this, because they can start tying hardware to specific Windows versions.
Hence the entire "superstore" hardware/distribution issue that will always plague Linux and partnerships to create Linux drivers.
heck, i'd settle for getting serial-bios capability out of commodity motherboards. "server" systems (and maybe high-end "workstation" motherboards) have it but things like the via c3 boxes i have posted about before generally don't.
I'm waiting to see what Apple cooks up. They won't share it, but it will possibly create enough stir to change the industry in general.
-- Bryan J. Smith mailto:b.j.smith@ieee.org