Re: [OT] Re: the ghost of UEFI and Micr0$0ft
On Tue, 05 Jun 2012 13:11:19 -0400, Tom H wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 5, 2012 at 9:49 AM, Camaleón <noelamac@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Tue, 05 Jun 2012 12:52:22 +0530, Harshad Joshi wrote:
>>>
>>> i was reading this article - http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/12368.html
>>>
>>> It is written by someone related to redhat and it describes
>>> implementing UEFI secure boot in Fedora Core.
>>
>> Ah, yes. I read about it recently in some Spanish tech magazine...
>>
>> IMO, Fedora did *the wrong thing* (since when blindly following what
>> Microsoft -or any other company- does is the correct way to achieve a
>> milestone?) in *the wrong way* (by not counting with the whole open
>> source community support, or at least the other linux distributions,
>> before taking such a decision).
>>
>> Of course, they're not committed to give explanations on what they do
>> nor how they do, but neither makes a favor to the FLOSS community :-/
>
> It's easy to criticize Fedora but what would you have liked them to do?
> They published a white paper [1] with Ubuntu last October in response to
> Microsoft's Secure Boot plans. Where were the other distributions
> pre-the-white-paper? Where were the other distributions
> post-the-white-paper? Was there an official statement from Debian, even
> post-the-white-paper, to the effect that "this is a bad development,
> we're going to work with Red Hat and Canonical to fight it"?
That white paper points to Canonical and Redhat companies.
I wonder if they tried to contact the other community linux members and
distributions or even thought about another way of handling this through
The Linux Foundation, for instance.
> The other distributions only have themselves to blame if Fedora's ended
> up going its own way. I wonder what happened to Ubuntu
> post-the-white-paper; it's even more bizarre than the other
> distributions not making any kind of statement or seemingly not getting
> involved in fighting for Linux, given that like Fedora, Ubuntu has a new
> release in October/November that'll have take Secure Boot into account.
> Also, I suspect that had Debian's participation been raised on
> debian-devel, the flame war would have ended after F18 and U12.10 had
> been published (witness the never-ending "discussions" on replacing
> sysvinit that have been going on, intermittently, since last summer).
Maybe is that they were not properly queried for comments. And remember
Debian has not a time-based schedule for their releases so why should we
worry about the other's hurries to be more Windows-friendly?
> For those of us who want to dual-, triple-, ...-boot Windows, want to
> boot from a Live CD, want to compile their own kernels, want to use
> kernel modules not included in their distribution (assuming that the
> distribution can boot using Secure Boot), ..., we have to thank Fedora
> for working to change the spec to allow Linux to boot using Secure boot.
You can send them a gift ;-)
> It's horrible that we'll have to go through Microsoft to boot Linux
> using Secure Boot but it leveraged its dominance and power to suit
> itself (at least in the desktop field, because in the server field,
> where Linux has a far more substantial presence, there's no such
> requirement, AFAIU). Looking at it objectively, Microsoft has
> manoeuvered skillfully. It would've liked to lock down x86 in the same
> way that it locked down ARM but knew that it would open itself to legal
> problems so it compromised.
We don't have to hold for those "horrible" things anymore. We need to
develop our own way. If we remain at the commands of MS we will be doing
it wrong.
> Lastly, Fedora's position isn't set in stone - at least not officially-
> because FESCO has yet to sign off on the Garrett/Jones plan (although
> it's a fair bet that it'll be approved). Its biggest strength is that
> those who are opposed to Secure Boot can simply turn it off!
I hope they think deeply about this decision but I'm afraid they'll not.
> 1.
> http://blog.canonical.com/2011/10/28/white-paper-secure-boot-impact-on-linux/
Greetings,
--
Camaleón
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