It's my opinion that you should look deeper into the issues than just skimming it before throwing thousands of dollars away.
First, Microsoft has mandated(as much as they can mandate to OEMs without violating antitrust!) that in order to receive Windows 8 logo certification, the OEM must provide a way for a physically present user to turn off UEFI secure boot in the setup menu and for that user to be able to add remove signing keys(including removing Microsoft's key!) at their will.
Coming to ARM and Windows RT, perhaps your antitrust inquiry might want to look at the elephant in the HN discussion - Apple - first, instead of being laughed out of the courtroom about picking on a platform with 0% marketshare compared to a platform which does the same thing with ~80% marketshare and >90% profit share.
Coming to actual meaningful things that can be accomplished for F/OSS desktop, you might want to consider reading the Red Hat blog post about secure boot. OEMs are willing to add signing keys of other players, but no one is interested in starting or running an operation that can sign F/OSS kernels with their key(after checking if that it's not malware).
Perhaps your few K$ might be better spent on such a nonprofit organization or division of the Linux foundation instead of throwing it at lawyers? Just my thoughts.
> Microsoft has mandated(as much as they can mandate to OEMs without violating antitrust!)
And similarly, everyone can install the browser of their choice on Windows. But it was still an antitrust violation, because it was, in effect, leveraging a monopoly in one market (Operating Systems) to produce gains in another (Browsers). This is along the same lines, except it is using a monopoly in the Operating Systems market to farther same monopoly.
> picking on a platform with 0% marketshare compared to a platform which does the same thing with ~80% marketshare and >90% profit share.
There's a huge difference here; Apple makes both the software and the hardware. Microsoft makes software and forces hardware makers to comply. And no one would even care about that requirement, if it weren't for their desktop OS monopoly. Again, leveraging monopoly in one market to farther gains (limit competition) in another.
It's not the 0% marketshare I care about. It's the monopoly abuse.
And I don't think anyone has a reasonable legal complaint against Xbox360 not running Linux even if it were 90% of the console market. Apple sells (Hardware+Software) they make themselves. Xbox360 is (Hardware+Software) Microsoft makes themselves. This is NOT the situation in the PC or non-apple phone or non-apple tablet market.
> OEMs are willing to add signing keys of other players, but no one is interested in starting or running an operation that can sign F/OSS kernels with their key(after checking if that it's not malware).
Microsoft charging $100 for certifying something is not malware is a joke. As was mentioned earlier in this thread, it is much more likely that they are after pirate OEM Win7 activations.
If I was a malware distributor, I would make sure that I submit - directly and indirectly - hundreds of bootloaders and kernels, many of them exploitable through buffer overflows or similar tactics.
I've been burned too many times with hardware that supposedly worked but turned out to only work well under windows (With bad ACPI kernel tables, and other such stuff), to trust the theory that everything will work out well.
The only way to fight this is legally.
> Perhaps your few K$ might be better spent on such a nonprofit organization or division of the Linux foundation instead of throwing it at lawyers? Just my thoughts.
>This is along the same lines, except it is using a monopoly in the Operating Systems market to farther same monopoly.
None of the millions of apps written for DOS and Windows will ever run on Windows RT. How is that leveraging a monopoly? Doesn't your argument apply to Windows Phone too?
>There's a huge difference here; Apple makes both the software and the hardware. Microsoft makes software and forces hardware makers to comply.
Why would you want the government to exclusively punish the software OS makers who don't sell hardware with that software? So, a company making software that is open to running on hardware made by different companies should be burdened with additional restrictions that companies like Apple are not? Sounds like a nice way to kill the whole concept competing on hardware(which drove down PC prices in the latter 80s).
So the lesson here for MS is to go with Windows RT only on the Surface and follow Apple's model? After all there is Android for the OEMs(HTC and LG just dropped out due to bad sales).
>Microsoft charging $100 for certifying something is not malware is a joke. As was mentioned earlier in this thread, it is much more likely that they are after pirate OEM Win7 activations.
Perhaps, they're not mutually exclusive with rootkits.
And maybe you missed the memo that UEFI secure boot must be able to be turned off by the user? The pirates can simply disable it.
>If I was a malware distributor, I would make sure that I submit - directly and indirectly - hundreds of bootloaders and kernels, many of them exploitable through buffer overflows or similar tactics.
Good luck with that, I am sure the requirements will be like the iOS app store, requiring a credit card and a tax id which they can track across all your accounts. One piece of malicious software detected will lead to the keys of all your submissions revoked.
>I've been burned too many times with hardware that supposedly worked but turned out to only work well under windows (With bad ACPI kernel tables, and other such stuff), to trust the theory that everything will work out well.
Just turn off the secure boot? Too hard to go into UEFI setup and turn this off?
I can understand why bright kids these days want to be lawyers these days instead of going into the tech space.
What are you trying to fight legally on what grounds? Windows RT secure boot or Windows 8 UEFI requirements too?
How is it Microsoft's fault that OS vendor don't want to bother to create a mechanism to sign kernels with their keys that the OEMs are perfectly willing to add and if not, the user can add themselves?
> How is that leveraging a monopoly? Doesn't your argument apply to Windows Phone too?
It is leveraging the desktop monopoly to make inroads into the tablet and phone market. If I start a company tomorrow called "Zikrosoft" which produces "Win Zit 8 ZT", a phone OS on par with WinRT 8, I might get some traction or not, but I most definitely would NOT got anyone to lock down hardware they produce for use with my software. The only reason someone takes the Microsoft requirement seriously is that MS has a monopoly in desktop and business software. Ergo: leveraging monopoly in one market (desktop operating system / business software) to gain an advantage in another market (phones, tablets).
> Why would you want the government to exclusively punish the software OS makers who don't sell hardware with that software?
> Sounds like a nice way to kill the whole concept competing on hardware(which drove down PC prices in the latter 80s).
Dude, Microsoft is a convicted monopolist. They've killed tens of companies with practices similar to this. Antitrust laws exist for a reason, and microsoft is arguably abusing its monopoly position in the os market here.
Instead of asking me, ask yourself - how is this different than the integrated browser thing, which was decided by both US and European court to be an antitrust violation. I can't see a material difference.
> Good luck with that, I am sure the requirements will be like the iOS app store, requiring a credit card and a tax id which they can track across all your accounts. One piece of malicious software detected will lead to the keys of all your submissions revoked.
There are apps on the app store that give you proxying ability. (A "trojan" against Apple's and the carrier's tethering income). Whenever one gets famous it is pulled from the store. I cannot name one that is active right now, but I'm aware of at least 3 which were available for months each.
Furthermore, I'm sure there are hundreds of apps which unintentionally can be exploited through buffer overflows (source: I found those in every C program I've evaluated) - the exploitable code can be useful; it doesn't have to be malicious - just exploitable.
Certification against malware is a joke. Just like the SSL certification process is supposed to guarantee identity. If you think this is going to work better than SSL certificates and Authenticode signatures for ActiveX, you have to know something I (and most of the public) doesn't.
> Just turn off the secure boot? Too hard to go into UEFI setup and turn this off?
I don't know. I would think that including reliable ACPI tables would be simple, rather than non-standard ones that only Windows could read (or that are overridden by Windows drivers). And yet, it isn't. I'm not trusting that it is possible to comfortably turn off secure boot until I've seen it happen.
> What are you trying to fight legally on what grounds? Windows RT secure boot or Windows 8 UEFI requirements too?
Yes. Microsoft's monopoly abuse. Both are examples of it.
> How is it Microsoft's fault that OS vendor don't want to bother to create a mechanism to sign kernels with their keys that the OEMs are perfectly willing to add and if not, the user can add themselves?
How is it Microsoft's fault that they give away IE, when everyone is free to install a new browser themselves?
It is, because of antitrust laws. And they are there for a reason.
IE was, at the time, a much better browser than Netscape. But it didn't get any significant market share until it was getting bundled with the OS. And a few years later Microsoft had 90% of the browser market. Yes, Netscape was just as much to blame -- but if IE wasn't bundled, perhaps they (or Opera) would have used the slower IE adoption to get their act together.
You are arguing theory, and I'm arguing practice (as shown by history). History doesn't usually repeat itself, but it rhymes very well.
First, Microsoft has mandated(as much as they can mandate to OEMs without violating antitrust!) that in order to receive Windows 8 logo certification, the OEM must provide a way for a physically present user to turn off UEFI secure boot in the setup menu and for that user to be able to add remove signing keys(including removing Microsoft's key!) at their will.
Coming to ARM and Windows RT, perhaps your antitrust inquiry might want to look at the elephant in the HN discussion - Apple - first, instead of being laughed out of the courtroom about picking on a platform with 0% marketshare compared to a platform which does the same thing with ~80% marketshare and >90% profit share.
Coming to actual meaningful things that can be accomplished for F/OSS desktop, you might want to consider reading the Red Hat blog post about secure boot. OEMs are willing to add signing keys of other players, but no one is interested in starting or running an operation that can sign F/OSS kernels with their key(after checking if that it's not malware).
Perhaps your few K$ might be better spent on such a nonprofit organization or division of the Linux foundation instead of throwing it at lawyers? Just my thoughts.