2024-12-29 –, Stage YELL
Language: English
In this talk we will first show you that a fully free BIOS firmware, is not only possible but also necessary to guarantee your freedom, technological independence and security in the long run. We will then present GNU Boot, a 100% free boot firmware distribution that accomplished these goals. The presentation will be held by Adrien Bourmault, one of the GNU Boot maintainers, whom will dive into the project's origins, goals and current status.
It's getting harder and harder to find hardware that works with 100% free (as in freedom) software. To counter this, the promotion and development of fully free boot firmware is ever more crucial.
Firmwares are software that sit in between the hardware and the operating system. They play a crucial role in making our computers work. However most of the time they are proprietary (nonfree). This limits users' freedom who are forced to trust black boxes. Being able to use 100% free firmwares can not only
guarantee security but also enable transparency and control by the community.
In this talk we will look at what is a boot firmware, and why it is essential that it is free software, and how it works in practice. We will also look at GNU Boot, a fully free boot firmware distribution: we will look at how the project is organized, what are features it provides, and its role within the movement for a fully free software BIOS/UEFI replacement.
Adrien 'neox' Bourmault is a free software developer, free software activist, and an advocate for the commons.
Adrien discovered free software in 2014 at a TED conference in Geneva.
In 2016 he joined the Free Software Foundation and started advocating for free software and contributing to free software projects.
Adrien is also one of the founders of Libre en Communs (established in 2021), which is a non-profit that promotes and helps free software. Libre en Communs provides gratis hosting to free software
projects on servers that run only free software. Adrien later became the treasurer of Libre en Communs and also leader of the infrastructure team that provisions the servers of the non-profit.
In 2022, Adrien got elected as member of the XMPP Standards Foundation and then became responsible for the translation of the XMPP information letter to French (published on free software magazines like LinuxFR).
Since 2023 Adrien is one of the GNU Boot maintainers, a free software distribution of boot firmwares that enables people to free their BIOS/UEFI on supported computers.
Professionally Adrien is a research engineer.
