Originally posted by stormcrow
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(Which, by itself, if microsoft is indeed releasing their own variant of Linux kernel and publishing its GPLv2'ed code, has some interesting implication regarding the exFAT patents, similar to Samsung situation a few years back).
Originally posted by gnarlin
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So in theory Microsoft could write a custom Linux kernel, release its code (as per GPLv2), but have key functionality tightly coupled to some hardware key-signing (think TPM) to which they do not to release the keys (unlike GPLv3) so no way for users to upload their own replacement firmware to those IoT devices.
So Microsoft's range evil doing is pretty limited, and would mostly be stupid: Why lock their own device to community, when people could as well pick-up a $10 Raspberry Pi Zero W that runs mainstream kernel that gives the same peripherals (Wifi, etc.) with perhaps a slightly higher power consumption (100mA idle vs 50mA speculated somewhere online) but a much better CPU performance (1Ghz ARMv6 vs 500Mhz announced for Azure Sphere - their whole reason given as an excuse for going Linux instead of Windows IoT)
(Note: Raspberry Pi's Broadcom Video Core even has an opensource alternative firmware for the bootload if you only aim for headless use)
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