this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2025
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Even if the code is there, you will need someone to maintain that code. Easier or not, even in a git repository, those individual components will eventually not have the support necessary to patch it.
If an eight year old usb controller has flaws, and the manufacturer is not maintaining that git repository anymore because they cannot possibly afford to hire someone to look at that code after so long, then it is going to keep those flaws. It wont matter if that code is proprietary or open source and included in coreboot. Its just simply not feasible to support hardware properly once most of the world has moved on to other products.
I wish all the firmware for every motherboard was made public and open sourced. Even if a company has proprietary firmware/drivers, I would hope that once that product reaches end of life that they do in fact open source that code so that someone else can pick up where they left off.
I 100% agree that they should not brick their hardware once it reaches end of life. There might be someone out there who would take on the task of maintaining it, which is better than nobody maintaining it.