Linux Foundation Welcomes LVFS Project (Linux.com)

Linux.com interviews Richard Hughes about the Linux Vendor Firmware Service (LVFS), which has recently joined the Linux Foundation as a new project. Hughes is the founder and maintainer of the project. 'The short-term goal was to get 95% of updatable consumer hardware supported. With the recent addition of HP that's now a realistic target, although you have to qualify the 95% with 'new consumer non-enterprise hardware sold this year' as quite a few vendors will only support hardware no older than a few years at most, and most still charge for firmware updates for enterprise hardware. My long-term goal is for the LVFS to be seen like a boring, critical part of infrastructure in Linux, much like you’d consider an NTP server for accurate time, or a PGP keyserver for trust.

With the recent Spectre and Meltdown issues hitting the industry, firmware updates are no longer seen as something that just adds support for new hardware or fixes the occasional hardware issue. Now the EFI BIOS is a fully fledged operating system with networking capabilities, companies and government agencies are realizing that firmware updates are as important as kernel updates, and many are now writing in 'must support LVFS' as part of any purchasing policy.'