Michael Reed is the latest person to write about "restricted boot" (or UEFI) in a major GNU/Linux Web site. Matthew Garrett, who started a lot of the outcry, calls it a bug and Groklaw helps remind us that "Microsoft’s license provision [was] prohibiting OEMs from modifying the initial boot sequence…"
Novell v. Microsoft -- What's It All About? ~ by pj
[...]
These are not allegations; they are findings from the DOJ case against Microsoft, and now Novell is asking the court to rule that they are established for this case as well. It's an awful list, but two absolutely leap off the page in 2011, the one "Microsoft’s license provision prohibiting OEMs from modifying the initial boot sequence…" and the one "Microsoft’s intellectual property rights did not confer a privilege to violate the antitrust laws, id. at 63, and Microsoft could not justify these license restrictions on the grounds that it was simply exercising its rights as the holder of valid copyrights…" Presumably the latter is also true of patents. And on the booting question, it's creepy to realize that right now, Microsoft is requiring OEMs to use a "Secure Boot" feature if they ship Windows 8 that has the potential to block competing operating systems, like Linux, from being put on a machine with Windows 8.
--George Santayana
Comments
Michael
2011-11-04 22:51:51
Para-Doxe
2011-11-05 11:48:42
Michael
2011-11-05 16:14:23
Para-Doxe
2011-11-05 17:48:52
Because Microsoft abuse of this control.
When you are in domination position, you have some more responsibility than your competitors. This is why some anti-trust laws exist.