Re: the ghost of UEFI and Micr0$0ft
On Thu, Jun 07, 2012 at 06:20:25PM -0400, Tom H wrote:
> The shim boot loader that's being planned by Fedora would be signed by
> Microsoft but is open source [1] - it wouldn't be accepted in Fedora
> otherwise.
>From the Free Software Foundation:
A program is free software if the program's users have the four
essential freedoms:
• The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
• The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does
your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is
a precondition for this.
• The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor
(freedom 2).
• The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others
(freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance
to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a
precondition for this.
The bootloader might technically be free software, it meets the above
four freedoms. I can get the source and modify it. But I can't
exercise my freedom by actually running it. I can't *use* it. Not
unless I pay some money for a special key. And get "authorised" to
run my own code on my own computer.
Let's be clear what this is. I have to get *permission* from someone
else, to run a program on my own computer. To actually use my
computer to do my stuff, I have to take extraordinary steps to get
someone else to grant me access. That's *fundamentally wrong*.
Roger
--
.''`. Roger Leigh
: :' : Debian GNU/Linux http://people.debian.org/~rleigh/
`. `' schroot and sbuild http://alioth.debian.org/projects/buildd-tools
`- GPG Public Key F33D 281D 470A B443 6756 147C 07B3 C8BC 4083 E800
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