[Wylug-discuss] UEFI

[Andrew Lindley]

I suspect a mouse-o means this has not reached the mailing list.
Apologies if this is a duplicate in your inbox.

OK first a *very big* IANAL here.

The 'UEFI thing' I mention in relation to Prof. Anderson is
specifically the 'secure boot' UEFI feature and yes there are very
likely other aspects of UEFI that are technically desirable for the
Linux kernel.

Prof. Anderson's statement that Microsoft logo-ing this feature is
'clearly unlawful' is entirely consistent with the training on EU
competition law I received in my days as a (Consent Decree era) IBM
employee.  Put simply if you're in a dominant position in a market in
an EU region you cannot do things that affect 'the playing field' for
others willy nilly. Another IANAL for good measure.  Changing things
to prevent dual-boot would fall under that as well.

I'll temper this with a statement that clearly the IBM training was
designed to ensure the consent decree 100% compliance 0 failures wrt 
the law and so was very very no risks oriented.  In my old job I'd be
confident of getting a logo-ing with mandatory secure boot admin
control past the company lawyers. But short of ages searching the only
thing I can turn up that is relevant is that the Australians are
having a go at UEFI secure boot for logo-ing under their consumer
rights.  If anyone has links to where the EU law dimension of this has
been addressed I'd be very interested in hearing.

Leny

On Mon, 24 Oct 2011 12:57:31 +0100
John R Hudson <j.r.hudson at virginmedia.com> wrote:

> On Monday 24 October 2011 11:32:25 Andrew Lindley wrote:
> > Apropos is Professor Ross Anderson's blog article which states that
> > the UEFI thing is 'clearly illegal' linking a page on EU
> > competition law [1]. UEFI is clearly constraint of the Linux kernel
> > development methodology.  Any awareness raising should involve
> > promoting the idea of a pooled complaint by GNU/Linux businesses
> > and developers to the Competition Commissioners.
> > 
> > Andrew / Leny
> > 
> > [1]
> > http://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2011/09/20/trusted-computing-2-0/
> > 
> The debate has moved on because UEFI can be implemented as an
> alternative to BIOS or on top of BIOS and, while MS originally spoke
> in terms of using it as an alternative to BIOS for OEMs, they have
> since said that they to do intend to exclude 'legacy' [their word]
> operating systems from operating alongside Windows.
> 
> It will be up to OEMs how they install Windows; some may choose to
> install UEFI as an alternative to BIOS, others on top of BIOS.
> 
> However, from a Linux perspective, UEFI would allow the
> implementation of GPT and therefore the use of >2Tb drives; so a
> general move to UEFI ought to be in Linux favour - the devil as
> always is in the detail. But I think we should separate out the
> desirability of a move to UEFI from the specific implentations of
> particular companies.
> 
> John
> --