The undecided question before the industry today is just how functional new UEFI-enabled firmware should become. That it should have some repair and recovery features is almost certain. But whether to enable manageability features that have characteristically resided in the realm of the OS is a matter still under discussion.

Because the absence of BIOS opens up so much more firmware space, AMI's Brian Richardson tells us "there's a lot of things that we're doing that we haven't thought of doing before." AMI's Aptio firmware includes a feature which its marketing literature characterizes using the words, "EFI as a 'DOS alternative'" -specifically, a command-line shell. AMI has made it clear that they would like to expand Aptio's shell into a graphical environment; competitor Phoenix currently produces the TrustedCore firmware suite , which gives administrators graphical diagnostics. "A cell phone has got a better setup and display than my BIOS setup," remarks Richardson.

UEFI Forum members are saying quite loudly that no single company should proclaim for the industry what applications should appear within the new firmware space. "The Forum is for a spec-i-fi-ca-tion," AMD's Richard Brunner enunciates. "That is the purpose of the forum, period. It is not to push particular implementations, it's not to dictate to the industry or force the industry to do something. I'm not a lawyer, and I don't play one on TV, but I get very sensitive to people thinking that somehow this Forum is going to be dictating to the industry what it needs to do."

But while the UEFI Forum steers clear of implementation matters, Insyde's Jonathan Joseph revealed to Tom's Hardware Guide, "there's actually a separate organization being formed to handle taking elements of Intel's Framework and turning it into an industry-style spec." The group hasn't written its legal charters yet, says Joseph, though it may be comprised of BIOS vendors and other silicon manufacturers - among them, certain graphics subsystem producers - who may adopt the working title "The Firmware Foundation."

Manufacturers speak of implementing only the changes that their customers want. For 24 years, there has been a profound absence of any mass movement to remove the BIOS from the x86 platform. Throughout that time, not even the wildest promises prospective vendors could make of fabulous end-user functionality could unseat the consistency and compatibility of the familiar 8086-era infrastructure. So to make this new revolution work, the new UEFI Forum may be taking a hint from the success of government turnovers in the former Soviet republics of Ukraine and Georgia: These days, the more successful revolutions are the quieter ones.