FSF Sponsors GNU Boot, an Open Replacement for BIOS and UEFI

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has announced sponsorship of GNU Boot, an open alternative to BIOS and UEFI. The project is more than three years old and supports dozens of desktops and laptops, including Apple devices. No modern computer boots without BIOS or UEFI, yet the vast majority of these firmware implementations are closed. GNU Boot offers fully open source code.

Why open firmware matters

Firmware runs before the operating system. It initializes the processor, memory and peripherals, then hands control to the bootloader. Everything that executes at this stage has full access to the hardware. Closed code here therefore means users cannot verify what is actually running on their machine, and cannot fix it. A vulnerability in UEFI survives an OS reinstall and a disk replacement. For the FSF, this is a fundamental question of control over one's own device.

GNU Boot belongs to the family of coreboot-based distributions. The project began as a response to the dispute over whether proprietary blobs are acceptable in such builds. Its goal is stricter than that of many similar projects: no closed components at all. That also determines which devices it can support.

What we know about the project

According to the announcement, the key parameters look like this:

• sponsor: Free Software Foundation;
• project age: more than three years of development;
• support: dozens of computer and laptop models;
• Apple devices are on the list;
• license and code: fully open source;
• purpose: replacing BIOS and UEFI.

The announcement does not disclose the specific models or the details of the sponsorship agreement. The amount of funding is also unknown. All that is clear for now is that the project has gained institutional backing. For a small team of enthusiasts, that matters: infrastructure, legal support and visibility are often worth more than money.

Limitations to be aware of

Open firmware almost always means betting on older hardware. Modern Intel and AMD platforms depend on closed components: memory initialization, microcode, and management subsystems such as Intel ME or AMD PSP. A project that rejects blobs on principle cannot cover recent models. That is why such lists contain many laptops from past years. Apple support looks non-trivial, but judging by the wording, it refers to specific older devices, not to current Apple Silicon chips with their own boot architecture.

There is also a risk familiar from open source: a narrow team. Three years of work and dozens of supported machines show resilience, but maintaining firmware requires access to specific hardware and testing on it. FSF sponsorship helps, but it does not solve the problem automatically.

Who can use it in practice

If you own a suitable laptop or PC, it is worth checking your model against the list of supported devices on the project's website. Flashing the firmware requires an external programmer, and a mistake can turn the machine into a brick. Back up the original firmware before any experiments.

For organizations with heightened requirements for platform trust, GNU Boot is interesting as a reference point. It shows that the boot layer can be made verifiable. For ordinary users, the benefit is still indirect: pressure on manufacturers from open projects is growing, and so is interest in verifiable firmware. It is worth watching whether the list of compatible models expands and whether the project publishes reports on any audits it has conducted.