On Fri, Oct 29, 2004 at 01:29:47AM -0400, Rick Thomas wrote: > Bottom line question... Does the Apple licensing requirement for > the drivers and patches mean that (as a practical matter) we'll > never be able to write a "free" miboot that can boot off > "partitioned media"?
Well, I wouldn't say never. The only patch we absolutely have to have is the one for MESH support. Obviously that is important, since most oldworld models do have that. However, that would only prevent us from creating a free partitioning tool. As long as the user has at some point partitioned the drive with an official tool, the patches will all be there. The problem with that is CD-ROM support, since that is done as part of the ISO image creation. The patches aren't actually put into miboot, so it's relatively independent of the question of "is miboot free". Would we be able to use the patch drivers if someone convinced Apple to give us permission to redistribute them? This is old, obsolete stuff, after all. If we could even put them in a special, non-free package, it could be usable. > Is a "free" but "floppy only" version of miboot worth the effort? Probably. It would make it possible to make bootable floppy images that actually work without having to change OF settings. If we had this support, we could legally put an image up that users could dd onto a floppy, stick in their Mac, and run the installer without needing anything else. Of course, they couldn't install a bootloader in this case without either booting from floppy every time or having used 3rd party tools. Brad Boyer [EMAIL PROTECTED]