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On 16/12/12 12:06, paul sutton wrote: > http://www.out-law.com/page-5811 > > The above link is to the Law on anti-competition, given that the MS > dominated UFEI boot issue is locking out Linux or has the potential to > lock out linux without using complex work arounds > > With specific reference to this > > Abuse of a dominant market position (Chapter II / Article 102 prohibition) > > Both UK and EU competition law prohibit businesses with significant > market shares unfairly exploiting their strong market positions. > > If MS are seen by people here as breaching this aspect of the law adn > there is a consensus here that we agree and that I have not mis > interpreted something then we have a good cause to not only write to our > local MPs, but we can make a strong case for something, and hopefully > get the issue sorted however. > > We also need to be clear as to what we want, clearly UFEI has its + > points however when combined with a company who abuse it, to gain more > market share, then those + points become somewhat negated. So do the > community want to be able to simply boot alternative Operaing systems > freely without restrictions but retain the new boot technology > > > If we are concerned about this, then people will bother to write to > MP's taking about it here WILL NEVER get the issue solved, action will > > Paul > > > Don't get me wrong, I'm probably more upset about this than most of you as it will directly impact my work (I build a *lot* of kernels) but the MS standard does mandate that the secure boot functionality of UEFI for x86/64 machines MUST be able to be toggled off at user behest. This differs from ARM, where it states that it must NOT be able to be turned off by users. Certainly, some half-arsed companies may ship crippled UEFI implementations without the on/off functionality included on x86 but that A: remains to be seen and B: you wouldn't want to buy a computer from such a company in the first place. All your mainstream suppliers will continue as per usual, and you will be able to simply enter UEFI, disable secure boot whilst enabling AHCI/VT-x/etc and you'll be done. RedHat and others are working on providing a shim loader so that you can keep secure boot on and use it's cryptographically verified boot sequence to chainload your linux kernel as per usual, with added security. In the server world, no Tier 1 supplier would dream of shipping any blade/tower/rack unit without a full featured UEFI implementation as very, very many of those boxes are destined for Linux installs and they are fully aware of that. Dell/HP/IBM/etc would start haemorrhaging $billions if they were shipping boxes which couldn't immediately be imaged with Linux and booted straight into cloud infrastructures, clusters and what-not without admins having to manually cock about with turning off win8 stupidity in UEFI. I'm not the biggest Microsoft fan - to put it mildly - and I'm old enough to be familiar with their history of anti-trust behaviour but this whole thing has been massively over-sensationalized by the tech media. Don't believe the hype. As for writing to our MPs - yeah, right. I struggle to think of a bigger waste of my time. The very idea that a handful of emails to our clueless and powerless MPs could in any way effect the determination of a multi-billion-dollar multinational corporate behemoth headquartered in the States... ha! I might as well send a letter to Saudi Arabia asking them to be nicer to women. Regards -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq