And an obligatory link to CoreBoot, which I believe has a bit more history than Libreboot:

https://www.coreboot.org/Intel_Management_Engine

Libreboot is just a more strict about freedom coreboot from what I understand. As in it is literally a fork/derivative of coreboot.

Ah got it. With the recent GNU drama of libreboot I wonder how viable it really is as an ecosystem.

Personally I think the FSF ideology taken too far is pretty ridiculous anyway.

Yet here we are, discussing the secret OS that runs on its own chip and can't be disabled by the end-user.

The world is a pretty ridiculous place, even with the best efforts of those ridiculous FSF zealots. I don't always agree with them and their methods and communication skills aren't perfect, and it's a shame to see coreboot/libreboot get fragmented etc... but imagine how backwards the world would be without some people taking things 'a bit too far sometimes'.

Another difference is that Coreboot is essentially a rolling release, whereas Libreboot periodically takes a snapshot of upstream and maintains it for a while. Libreboot is therefore something like a long-term service release.

Anecdotally, I also found Libreboot easier to build. There is less configuration involved.

It's a distribution of coreboot + GRUB, 100% free of any proprietary blobs. Not really a "fork".