Novena: A Laptop with No Secrets
> This open-source requirement of ours ended up influencing the selection of almost every piece of hardware, including the main CPU, the battery controller, and the Wi-Fi module. For example, we couldn’t use Intel’s x86 microprocessors because they can accept firmware updates that we cannot debug or inspect. Instead we chose an ARM-based Freescale i.MX6 system-on-a-chip, which has no such updatable code embedded. (A system-on-a-chip, or SoC, is similar to a microprocessor except it has more of the supporting hardware, such as memory and peripheral interfaces, needed to make a complete computer.) The i.MX6 does have some code burned into it to coordinate the computer’s boot-up process, but this firmware can’t be changed, and its unencrypted binary code can be read out and analyzed for possible security problems.<p>I'm confused. They claim the open source requirement prevented them from going with an intel chip, but then they say the reason why was because intel could push firmware updates. Furthermore, the Freescale SoC has firmware built in, but it's not open source.<p>Is this what we consider open source these days? Sure, a good whitepaper is nice, but it's not open source. Don't get me wrong, this is still nice effort on the open front, but calling this a "laptop with no secrets" seems like a stretch.