it will eventually affect everything on a new motherboard, including
bare bones computers, system76 computers, the lot.
Ubuntu can either also go with Microsoft as the gatekeeper and pay the
$99 (which is trivial and in any event goes to verisign (which Mark
Shuttleworth may or may not have an opinion about)) and/or get an Ubuntu
(or Canonical) key on pre-installed systems (probably alongside a
Microsoft key).
Theoretically someone other than Microsoft could set up all the signing
infrastructure and security (not cheap if you do it properly, worse than
useless if you don't do it properly) and then do deals with every single
OEM to get the signing key distributed. This isn't going to happen. The
FSF or OSI or the Linux Foundation are arguably neutral enough, but lack
resources, any one distro would be problematic. A body such as the EU or
ISO or W3C or Apache Foundation would be interesting, but it isn't going
to happen. Microsoft with their market dominant position is the only
organisation in a position to be the gatekeeper to the market.
Personally I think they should be forced to spin out the signing portal
and put it in a foundation and change the key signing cost so that it is
self funding and the key revocation power isn't in Microsoft's hands. I
suspect they will be very very keen to be seen as a well behaved ethical
player to avoid this happening.
For ARM, it becomes even more locked down, if you get an ARM device with
a pre-loaded Microsoft key it is bricked by design, there is no way to
put better software on it.
Alan.
On 01/06/12 09:16, surfer wrote:
Does this merely concern HP and Dell machines or will it affect my cuts
price bare bones machines I order from Novatech?
Patrick Mulvey
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