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Free Software Foundation Campaign related to "Secure Boot"

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  • Free Software Foundation Campaign related to "Secure Boot"

    There is a campaign to make sure the "Secure Boot" feature of UEFI (which is starting to replace the BIOS in newer x86 motherboards) does not prevent running free operating systems.
    There are already almost 20,000 signers.

    The campaign can be found at http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/secure-...stricted-boot/
    Canonical also have a statement at http://blog.canonical.com/2011/10/28...pact-on-linux/
    Some good information can be found at http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/5552.html
    There was also a post on lwn.net earlier this year. see http://lwn.net/Articles/447381/

    If you care about free OSs, you should really sign the statement to show your support. Hopefully is achieves something.

  • #2
    Originally posted by Azmo View Post
    There is a campaign to make sure the "Secure Boot" feature of UEFI (which is starting to replace the BIOS in newer x86 motherboards) does not prevent running free operating systems.
    There are already almost 20,000 signers.
    First of all, it has the potential of preventing non-signed OS's of running depending on the motherboard manufacturer who ultimately controls what is implemented. It is up to them if they want to allow non "Secureboot" OS's to run (through the ability of disabling it). Second, petitions have never really worked. What is really needed is a lot of communication between the open source community and the motherboard manufacturers. The likes of Novell, Redhat, Canonical, AMD, Intel, etc have to start making real attempts at contacting these manufacturers and making sure that the compatibility is maintained (and while they are at it address other items like proper ACPI implementations and motherboard feature integration).

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    • #3
      Originally posted by deanjo View Post
      First of all, it has the potential of preventing non-signed OS's of running depending on the motherboard manufacturer who ultimately controls what is implemented. It is up to them if they want to allow non "Secureboot" OS's to run (through the ability of disabling it). Second, petitions have never really worked. What is really needed is a lot of communication between the open source community and the motherboard manufacturers. The likes of Novell, Redhat, Canonical, AMD, Intel, etc have to start making real attempts at contacting these manufacturers and making sure that the compatibility is maintained (and while they are at it address other items like proper ACPI implementations and motherboard feature integration).
      This does not contradict what I said.
      Petitions can have an impact, especially if many people sign it.

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      • #4
        Originally posted by Azmo View Post
        This does not contradict what I said.
        Petitions can have an impact, especially if many people sign it.
        Not when it comes to online petitions and especially when you are talking about non-windows support. You need corporations talking to them. If anything online petitions often hurt their own cause by giving them a number that they can use to to see if the market is even viable or not. I can't count the number of times a online petition reguarding linux support has failed miserably, I can however count the number of time one has worked, 0.
        Last edited by deanjo; 05 November 2011, 08:43 PM.

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        • #5
          I also remember Bioware running a poll themselves as to what platforms should be supported. After tens of thousands of replies, linux took 54%, even beating out the likes of xbox 360 / playstation 3 / wii / etc by a heathy margin. This was well after Neverwinter Nights and still Bioware has not released a linux version of their games since.

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          • #6
            Originally posted by deanjo View Post
            First of all, it has the potential of preventing non-signed OS's of running depending on the motherboard manufacturer who ultimately controls what is implemented. It is up to them if they want to allow non "Secureboot" OS's to run (through the ability of disabling it).
            Users/sysadmins shouldn't have to choose between secure boot with an OEM PK and disabling secure boot. Board vendors should provide some way to reset the board into "setup mode" so that the user/admin can always use secure boot with the PK of their choice (including their own personal/corporate/institutional PK if so desired).

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