D&C GLug - Home Page

[ Date Index ] [ Thread Index ] [ <= Previous by date / thread ] [ Next by date / thread => ]

Re: [LUG] fedora pays Microsoft to boot

 

On 06/01/2012 04:45 PM, Martijn Grooten wrote:
On Fri, Jun 1, 2012 at 11:35 AM, paul sutton wrote:
http://boingboing.net/2012/05/31/lockdown-freeopen-os-maker-p.html

this was posted to the Ubuntu forum,   I have contacted my Local MP on
this,  if others do the same then it may show that a number of people
are concerned about the issues  and anti competition.
  We should have the right to choose what Operating system we use / install.
I'm not sure if this is a much a problem as people make it out to be.

With the right access, someone could change the boot loader. So can
malware. So it could change the boot loader to load a modified version
of the operating system, with malware hidden deep inside it. That is
bad. So the idea that you would want to only boot operating systems
that have permission to do so is a sound one and that in itself has
nothing to do with Microsoft wanting to ban other operating systems
from being installed.

Making people pay a small amount of money - $99 is hardly the end of
the world - to have their OS signed makes sense as well - it prevents
malware authors from just signing the hundreds of versions of their
malware they release every day.

Fedora has also paid GeoTrust -- owned by Symantec -- some money for a
digital certificate that allows it to run a secure website on
https://fedoraproject.org/ (note the 's'). The idea behind that is not
too different.

What does sound odd to me, however (and by 'odd' I really mean
'wrong'), is that they'd have to pay the money to a company that makes
another operating system and not to some third party, as is the case
with SSL certificates. But then, the certificate model for SSL has
proven to be pretty broken, so I'm not saying I know of an easy
solution.

Martijn.

have just sent an email to my mp hugo swire,i will keep you updated if i get a reply.
alex the grrrrrr noob

--
The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG
http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list
FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq