Re: [gentoo-user] Lockdown: free/open OS maker pays Microsoft ransom for the right to boot on users' computers

[Florian Philipp]

Am 02.06.2012 04:26, schrieb William Kenworthy:
> http://boingboing.net/2012/05/31/lockdown-freeopen-os-maker-p.html
>
> and something I had not considered with the whole idea was even bootable
> cd's and usb keys for rescue will need the same privileges ...
>
> BillK
>
>
>
>

I find this article lacking in substance. You get a much more reasonable
view reading the original blog post by Matthew Garrett [1].

A few points:
> "meaning that unless Microsoft has blessed your favorite flavor of
> GNU/Linux or BSD, you won't be able to just install it on your
> machine, or boot to it from a USB stick or CD to try it out."

You don't have to be "blessed". You could call your distribution
BallmerSucks and still get a certificate. You just have to register,
authenticate and pay the fee. Anything else would earn them an antitrust
law suite they wouldn't forget.

> "There is a work-around for some systems involving a finicky and
> highly technical override process, but all that means is that
> installing proprietary software is easy and installing free/open
> software is hard."

They mean "finicky" as in "go to the BIOS and switch it off" and "some
systems" as in "all x86 hardware but not ARM"? Yeah, the situation is
not nice but it is not as bad as it could be. Microsoft requires that it
can be switched off for x86. It forbids it for ARM, though. The article
gets that bit right.

Regarding the 99$ "ransom": It is a one-off payment. The article should
have made that clear.

Okay, enough bashing the article. Some technical question: As I
understand it, if I want to make a live CD or a distribution, all I'd
need to do is to use Fedora's kernel and boot loader? That's not so bad.

[1] http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/12368.html

Regards,
Florian Philipp