JD writes:
On 06/01/2012 04:18 AM, Sam Varshavchik wrote:I don't give a frak about that. I just want to run my own stuff, without anyone else sticking their nose in my personal business. Is that too much to ask?This discussion reminds me of the great Philospher Hegel. The means used by tyrants to rise to power is the employment of creating a thesis (eg: computer hacking and computer security), offering (and even demanding) the antithesis (eg: UEFI restrictions), and when it becomes mandated by law, the tyrant is now in a position to create the synthesis (new mandates, elimination of the personal freedom to run whatever you want on your own computer)...etc....etc.
I wouldn't want to wrap the tin foil /that/ tightly around my head.This is simply Microsoft being Microsoft, that's all. I believe that this is a symptom of Microsoft internally realizing that they're losing a little bit of their market power, just slightly, just a bit, and the selected remedy is to tighten the fist even more.
But you do not counter that strategy by helping them tighten the grip. The correct approach would be to oppose this crap in its entirety, and not participate in any way; and stand in opposition. You don't do that by paying $99 for a cert.
If Microsoft wants to turn this into them versus everyone else, then so be it. Let's go. The fight's on.
But you don't fight this by coming over to their side. That makes no logical sense.
To all those who say that free software also benefits from having a secured bootloader: I agree. But the problem is that a secured, signed bootloader cannot simultaneously support both free and non-free OSes on the same hardware. Linux can benefit from a signed bootloader. So can Microsoft's OS. But the benefits each one gets are completely different, and Microsoft gets no benefit from a having a signed bootloader if it also supports a free OS, which then gets used to bypass all protections, completely different ones, that a signed bootloader gives to a non-free OS. These are the facts of life, the birds and the bees, folks.
Microsoft isn't stupid. They understand it as well. Which is why they will never sign a bootloader for a free OS, no matter what their PR is spinning.
All the bleating about malware protection is utter crap. Although it'll stop that, that's not why Microsoft wants a signed bootloader. Malware protection is just icing on the cake, and a convenient sock puppet.
This is really a sucker bet: who really wants to bet me that Microsoft will sign a bootloader for Linux as it exists right now, with all the present, documented capabilities of Linux unmodified?
How much anyone wants to bet on that? Come on. Any of you who are asserting that Microsoft will be signing a bootloader shim for an open Linux kernel, Fedora, Debian, or any other distro, in exchange for $99, any day now: do you feel as confidently of that, as I am of precisely the opposite?
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