I remember having seen a slide from the Maemo summit on flickr (can't find it right now) that said something like "normal boot sequence; no initfs" or so about Maemo 5.

First I didn't care much (I was looking for pictures of people), but now I wonder:

1.) Why is the boot process the way it is? Is it safer this way? Is it because of legal problems with closed components?

2.) What's the advantage of changing it? Will it be faster? Will there be things you can do that you cannot do now?