[KLUG Advocacy] re: DRM in every Samsung machine

Mike Williams advocacy@kalamazoolinux.org
Wed, 17 Mar 2004 16:04:33 -0500


Good points, Jamie, in an article way too long for me to try to quote.  
He points out that a BIOS that only boots signed code  is compatible 
with standard distros of Linux (negotiations with the companies 
permitting, anyway), but not custom kernels.  For somebody to do any OS 
programming, though, there will need to be "development machines" or 
something with that restriction disabled.  Somebody's gotta write these 
programs, and while they're being debugged they won't be signed.  Sounds 
to me like a worst case scenario is a black market in development 
machines that the big boys don't want anybody but actual developers to 
have.  If this signed code stuff makes it to the application level too, 
probably with OS support, then it should be fairly easy to get your 
hands on one that's unlocked.  There are way too many legitimate 
programmers out there for anybody to be able to keep track of all the 
unlocked machines without quite a few slipping through the cracks. 

Yes, I'm talking about illegal violations of license agreements, but not 
immoral violations. 

PS.  gotta love spellcheck:  Thunderbird suggest I replace the 
misspelled word  with bistros.