Thanks, Don, for the summary of Open Firmware history. It did start at Sun, as Open Boot, then we (a committee with representatives from Sun, Apple, IBM, and o

Thanks, Don, for the summary of Open Firmware history. It did start at Sun, as Open Boot, then we (a committee with representatives from Sun, Apple, IBM, and others) standardized it as IEEE 1275-1994. In addition to its use on Sun SPARC systems, it was the standard firmware for PowerPC systems based on the PREP and CHRP hardware platform specs (IBM, Apple, Motorola, ...). It was also adopted by HP for PA-RISC severs, by DEC (shortly before their demise) on their ARM-based "SHARK" network computer platform, by NetApp on their early x86 and Alpha based storage servers, and by a few other lesser-known companies. Then x86 pretty much took over the world. When IA64 was starting to come out, HP flew me up to Intel to propose - with the support of Microsoft! - that Open Firmware should be the standard firmware for IA64. Intel declined, because they had a couple of guys working on their own firmware design that would have similar functionality. That eventually morphed into UEFI, and after more than 10 years it was sort of up to part with Open Firmware - although I doubt that it will ever have the level of instant programmability and debugging capabilities of OFW. I understand why Intel chose the way they did. Their business model requires that they control as much of the low-level ecosystem as possible. "Owning" the firmware spec gives them leverage and control.