[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.