Fedora, secure boot, and an insecure future [LWN.net]

Fedora, secure boot, and an insecure future

Posted Jun 7, 2012 21:07 UTC (Thu) by gmaxwell (subscriber, #30048)
In reply to: Fedora, secure boot, and an insecure future by raven667
Parent article: Fedora, secure boot, and an insecure future

> As long as you have local key management and the option to disable your rights have not been infringed in _any_way_.

This simply isn't the case. Free Sofware— and the success of our ecosystem— depends on not just the ability to be personally free but to have the freedom to pass those rights on to other people.

If "just turn it off!" was enough for me it would also be enough for Fedora.

And again, there is no guarantee that it will be deactivatable. It was not until Redhat fought to fix that, and windows 7 existed before then.

As far as the corporation comment— Microsoft and RedHat sat at a negotiation table making these decisions, I'm not saying that I should have been there— but where was the non-profit and/or governmental party representing my interests relative to my ability to distribute software which will easily run on the widely available computers tomorrow?

> That would make it very easy for each spin or custom distro

And Fedora could work to make it easier. In the short term where getting the firmware consistent isn't an option having good help would be an option. This would leave all users, distributors, and authors equal and working towards common goals.

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Fedora, secure boot, and an insecure future

Posted Jun 8, 2012 5:17 UTC (Fri) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link]

>> As long as you have local key management and the option to disable your rights have not been infringed in _any_way_.

>This simply isn't the case. Free Sofware— and the success of our ecosystem— depends on not just the ability to be personally free but to have the freedom to pass those rights on to other people.

And you still haven't provided any example as to what rights aren't being passed on to other people, because there aren't any and you have no argument.

> And again, there is no guarantee that it will be deactivatable. It was not until Redhat fought to fix that, and windows 7 existed before then.

I'm not sure I can even parse that. In any event key management and the ability to disable are part of the Win8 logo requirements which should be widely adhered to. It doesn't have anything to do with RedHat and much to do with Win7.

> As far as the corporation comment— Microsoft and RedHat sat at a negotiation table making these decisions

Maybe they were smoking cigars and drinking whiskey too...

> And Fedora could work to make it easier

And of course the tools Fedora uses to make this happen will be available to anyone so it will be at least as easy for you or me as it is for them.

Fedora, secure boot, and an insecure future

Posted Jun 8, 2012 10:27 UTC (Fri) by drago01 (subscriber, #50715) [Link]

> This simply isn't the case. Free Sofware— and the success of our ecosystem— depends on not just the ability to be personally free but to have the freedom to pass those rights on to other people.

You still have this right (with or without secure boot). Fedora has no obligation by *any* license that can be called free to help your fork. Either by making there software less usable or anything else. All they have to do is to provide you the source and tools needed to create the fork.

And they *do* that. You have the source. You have the tools. If you want to sign it ... fine pay the 99$ and go ahead. If you don't or even can't (because you cannot afford the 99$) that's fine as well this does not make the software any less free.

By your logic Fedora is not free already because they have a competitive advantage over forks by having infrastructure (builders, mirrors, bug tracker...). All those cost way more then the stupid 99$. Oh and the trademark and marketing budget.

This is not that hard to understand really.

Fedora, secure boot, and an insecure future

Posted Jun 8, 2012 13:13 UTC (Fri) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link]

>> As long as you have local key management and the option to disable your rights have not been infringed in _any_way_.

Gentlemen, you need to realize that the problem is not Fedora or what they do. The problem lies in those distributing Fedora, that is, the OEMs. If System77 or Dell ships a laptop with Fedora preinstalled, then they are the ones that _have_ to instruct the user on how to change the keys, should they want to.

Fedora is just trying to be nice to people that didn't chose a preinstalled system, and instead just want to test the distro in hardware blessed for Windows 8. That you can do this is GOOD.