Documentation: Describe our ecosystem

Neither payloads nor distributors are an integral part of the coreboot
source tree, but they're very important parts of the coreboot
ecosystems, so add some descriptions.

Change-Id: Id64744c252b6b78c4811fbded48c441ef486ad94
Signed-off-by: Patrick Georgi <pgeorgi@google.com>
Reviewed-on: https://review.coreboot.org/c/31180
Tested-by: build bot (Jenkins) <no-reply@coreboot.org>
Reviewed-by: Arthur Heymans <arthur@aheymans.xyz>
Reviewed-by: Angel Pons <th3fanbus@gmail.com>

1 files changed, 46 insertions, 0 deletions

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+# Distributions
+
+coreboot doesn't provide binaries but provides a toolbox that others can use
+to build boot firmware for all kinds of purposes. These third-parties can be
+broadly separated in two groups: Those shipping coreboot on their hardware,
+and those providing after-market firmware to extend the usefulness of devices.
+
+## Shipping coreboot on hardware
+
+### Purism
+
+[Purism](https://www.puri.sm) sells laptops with a focus on privacy and
+part of that is their push to remove as much unaccounted code (that is,
+binary only) from their devices as possible.
+
+### Chromebooks
+
+All Chromebooks (and related devices) that hit the market after 2013 are
+using coreboot as their main firmware. And even the Embedded Controller,
+a small microcontroller to support various peripherals (like battery
+management or the keyboard) is running open source firmware.
+
+
+## After-market firmware
+
+### Libreboot
+
+[Libreboot](https://libreboot.org) is a project that provides ready-made
+binaries for platforms where those can be built entirely from source
+code. Their copy of the coreboot repository is therefore stripped of
+all devices that require binary components to boot.
+
+### Mr. Chromebox
+
+[Matt Devo](https://mrchromebox.tech/) provides replacement firmware for
+various Chromebooks. Why replace coreboot with coreboot?  You might want
+to do different things than what the Google engineers prepared for the
+mass market, that's why. This firmware is "with training wheels off".
+
+### John Lewis
+
+[John Lewis](https://johnlewis.ie/custom-chromebook-firmware) also
+provides replacements for Chromebook firmware, for the same reasons
+as Mr. Chromebox. It's a somewhat different set of devices, and with
+different configurations, so check out both if Chromebooks are what
+you're dealing with.