RedCloud
10th June 2012, 12:06
I'm not sure if there is an area dedicated to computers. I see a website section but this is not website related. So, sorry if there was another section I didn't see that this should have gone in, but I'm sure you techies as well as non-techies will rage over this as well...
"Lockdown: free/open OS maker pays Microsoft ransom for the right to boot on users' computers"
More of Microsoft's monopoly threatening the open source, GNU/Linux and Unix communities!
"At issue is a new facility called UEFI, which allows a computer's bootloader to distinguish between different operating systems by examining their cryptographic signatures. In theory, this can be used to alert you if malicious software has modified your OS, putting you at risk of having your passwords harvested, your video and sound secretly captured, and your files plundered. But rather than simply alerting users to unsigned or changed OSes Microsoft and its partners have elected to require a very complex and intimidating process that -- by design or accident -- is certain to scare off most unsophisticated users."
Ridiculous!
Fedora's Matthew Garrett explains their decision:
We've been working on this for months. This isn't an attractive solution, but it is a workable one. We came to the conclusion that every other approach was unworkable. The cause of free software isn't furthered by making it difficult or impossible for unskilled users to run Linux, and while this approach does have its downsides it does also avoid us ending up where we were in the 90s. Users will retain the freedom to run modified software and we wouldn't have accepted any solution that made that impossible.
But is this a compromise? Of course. There's already inequalities between Fedora and users - trademarks prevent the distribution of the Fedora artwork with modified distributions, and much of the Fedora infrastructure is licensed such that some people have more power than others. This adds to that inequality. It's not the ideal outcome for anyone, and I'm genuinely sorry that we weren't able to come up with a solution that was better. This isn't as bad as I feared it would be, but nor is it as good as I hoped it would be.
What about ARM
Microsoft's certification requirements for ARM machines forbid vendors from offering the ability to disable secure boot or enrol user keys. While we could support secure boot in the same way as we plan to on x86, it would prevent users from running modified software unless they paid money for a signing key. We don't find that acceptable and so have no plans to support it.
Thankfully this shouldn't be anywhere near as much of a problem as it would be in the x86 world. Microsoft have far less influence over the ARM market, and the only machines affected by this will be the ones explicitly designed to support Windows. If you want to run Linux on ARM then there'll be no shortage of hardware available to you.
http://boingboing.net/2012/05/31/lockdown-freeopen-os-maker-p.html
He doesn't 'want them returning to what they were in the 90s'. However, Linux has been continuously growing since the 2000s and has definitely been getting much more recognition. What is this going to do? Scare off people who won't know how to mod their system and use this workaround, once again bringing back the negative connotations that everything has to be modded, manually input via CLI interface just to run things and is completely user-unfriendly in every way in Linux.
This will only hinder Linux's progress as Microsoft will now own "rights" to what software is used on the users' home computers that have a deal with Microsoft (which is almost all of them except Apple and System76, since they come with OS X and Linux).
BUT I do believe Linus Torvalds will still have final say in this, as it is directly related to new usage of the Linux kernel? I could be wrong there though.
"Lockdown: free/open OS maker pays Microsoft ransom for the right to boot on users' computers"
More of Microsoft's monopoly threatening the open source, GNU/Linux and Unix communities!
"At issue is a new facility called UEFI, which allows a computer's bootloader to distinguish between different operating systems by examining their cryptographic signatures. In theory, this can be used to alert you if malicious software has modified your OS, putting you at risk of having your passwords harvested, your video and sound secretly captured, and your files plundered. But rather than simply alerting users to unsigned or changed OSes Microsoft and its partners have elected to require a very complex and intimidating process that -- by design or accident -- is certain to scare off most unsophisticated users."
Ridiculous!
Fedora's Matthew Garrett explains their decision:
We've been working on this for months. This isn't an attractive solution, but it is a workable one. We came to the conclusion that every other approach was unworkable. The cause of free software isn't furthered by making it difficult or impossible for unskilled users to run Linux, and while this approach does have its downsides it does also avoid us ending up where we were in the 90s. Users will retain the freedom to run modified software and we wouldn't have accepted any solution that made that impossible.
But is this a compromise? Of course. There's already inequalities between Fedora and users - trademarks prevent the distribution of the Fedora artwork with modified distributions, and much of the Fedora infrastructure is licensed such that some people have more power than others. This adds to that inequality. It's not the ideal outcome for anyone, and I'm genuinely sorry that we weren't able to come up with a solution that was better. This isn't as bad as I feared it would be, but nor is it as good as I hoped it would be.
What about ARM
Microsoft's certification requirements for ARM machines forbid vendors from offering the ability to disable secure boot or enrol user keys. While we could support secure boot in the same way as we plan to on x86, it would prevent users from running modified software unless they paid money for a signing key. We don't find that acceptable and so have no plans to support it.
Thankfully this shouldn't be anywhere near as much of a problem as it would be in the x86 world. Microsoft have far less influence over the ARM market, and the only machines affected by this will be the ones explicitly designed to support Windows. If you want to run Linux on ARM then there'll be no shortage of hardware available to you.
http://boingboing.net/2012/05/31/lockdown-freeopen-os-maker-p.html
He doesn't 'want them returning to what they were in the 90s'. However, Linux has been continuously growing since the 2000s and has definitely been getting much more recognition. What is this going to do? Scare off people who won't know how to mod their system and use this workaround, once again bringing back the negative connotations that everything has to be modded, manually input via CLI interface just to run things and is completely user-unfriendly in every way in Linux.
This will only hinder Linux's progress as Microsoft will now own "rights" to what software is used on the users' home computers that have a deal with Microsoft (which is almost all of them except Apple and System76, since they come with OS X and Linux).
BUT I do believe Linus Torvalds will still have final say in this, as it is directly related to new usage of the Linux kernel? I could be wrong there though.