Bonum Certa Men Certa

Microsoft's Monopolistic Abuses Continue as Red Hat and Fedora Tax Are Put in Place

Werewolf

Credit: beranger.org



Summary: Microsoft puts an unjust 'feature' in place and then uses it to blackmail Red Hat into paying for 'permission' (from Microsoft) to boot

THE anti-competitive behaviour of Microsoft is thoroughly documented in this Web site. Our item of focus has been the deal of Microsoft and Novell, but Microsoft had a much longer history of systematic abuse and violation of laws.



Recently, with the likely end of Oracle's tactless attack on Android, Groklaw returned to focusing a bit on Microsoft antitrust, as it applies to the company's abuses against Novell. To quote Pamela Jones:

The trial ended in a mistrial, because one juror held out for Microsoft on the issue of damages, after the entire group of twelve agreed that Microsoft was guilty of anticompetitive behavior.


Apologists of Microsoft love to pretend this is just something from the 1990s and that the so-called "new Microsoft" is all reformed. But this is utter nonsense; Microsoft just got more of its cronies inside the most dominant government (some are funded by Microsoft), which gives this convicted monopolist yet more leeway.

Microsoft spent some more buying the competition out some years ago (Novell) and now it uses SUSE to tax GNU/Linux under the pretence of "community". Some bloggers fall into the trap and assess it only on technical grounds. Quoting one of them:

I have installed it on pretty much everything around here, and it looks good.


What Microsoft is doing with SUSE -- patents-wise -- does not look good at all. The ultimate goal is to tax most GNU/Linux users. Fedora/Red Hat is the latest victim of those types of schemes, with Phoronix providing a roundup about the subject. Here is an article which puts it as follows:

Future versions of Fedora could come with a bootloader that is signed by Microsoft, a move that would ensure that the Linux distribution is easy to install on computers with the secure boot mechanism. The proposal was described in a blog entry this week by Red Hat kernel developer Matthew Garrett.


What a bad idea it is to become complicit. "UEFI signing won't affect security," said a contributor of ours, "except for market share security" (he cited this news as proof and another contributor gave this link).

The H labels it "support" and the original/main post about this UEFI stupidity gathered well over 200 comments. It's from a well-known Red Hat developer who wrote:



Fedora 17 was released this week. It's both useful and free, and serves as a welcome addition to any family gathering. Do give it a go. But it's also noteworthy for another reason - it's the last Fedora release in the pre-UEFI secure boot era. Fedora 18 will be released at around the same time as Windows 8, and as previously discussed all Windows 8 hardware will be shipping with secure boot enabled by default. While Microsoft have modified their original position and all x86 Windows machines will be required to have a firmware option to disable this or to permit users to enrol their own keys, it's not really an option to force all our users to play with hard to find firmware settings before they can run Fedora. We've been working on a plan for dealing with this. It's not ideal, but of all the approaches we've examined we feel that this one offers the best balance between letting users install Fedora while still permitting user freedom.


IDG's coverage of this emphasises that Red Hat is paying for it (can small distributors afford it also?) and calls it "capitulation". To quote:

In order to get its Linux distribution to run on the next generation of secured desktop computing hardware, the Fedora Project will obtain a digital signature from Microsoft, a developer from the project announced Wednesday.

"This isn't an attractive solution, but it is a workable one," wrote Matthew Garrett in a blog post on Wednesday. "We came to the conclusion that every other approach was unworkable."


Microsoft's new antifeatures are a bad scenario to software freedom and given that Vista 8 is not guaranteed to gain ground (Microsoft boosters do not like it either) Red Hat's actions represent a surrender; instead of surrendering, Red Hat should have filed an antitrust complaint about Microsoft. Not that a systemically-corrupt regime would be able to stand up to a large corporation, but sometimes one needs to stick to principles.

We also wrote about this a few days ago, having covered UEFI for quite some time [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. To accept and work around UEFI is not the solution; it sends out a message of defeatism.

Recent Techrights' Posts

New XBox Leaks Probably Serve to Confirm XBox's Collapse (Many More Layoffs)
It's very much consistent with what many other sites have reported lately
 
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 09, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, October 09, 2025
Links 09/10/2025: Farewell to Jane Goodall, California Bans Algorithmic Price-Fixing
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/10/2025: Lost Wages and a Saga Of Continuing To Use Palm PDAs
Links for the day
Richard Stallman's Talk in Helsinki is Done. Tomorrow Göteborg.
There are scarce details in Finnish about Dr. Stallman's talk
The Slop Song
The train wreck marches on
LLM Slop/Advanced Plagiarism Flooding the Zone With Capital That Does Not Exist
Many publishers out there still participate in this bubble instead of calling it what it is
Links 09/10/2025: Sacked Microsoft Workers Make "Sackbird", IBM Taps CockroachDB for PostgreSQL
Links for the day
"Happy Hacking Day" Richard Stallman Talk This Afternoon (From 14:00 to 16:00) at Haaga-Helia University in Pasila
Richard Stallman in Helsinki, Finland
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 08, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 08, 2025
Links 09/10/2025: Impact of Microsoft Layoffs, More Data Breaches
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/10/2025: Autumn Blues and C IRC Bot
Links for the day
Slopwatch Appreciated by Real Authors of GNU/Linux Articles
We do try to keep on top of those things
Upgraded R.R.R.R.R.R. Today
The Web of 2025 is full of garbage, not limited to slopfarms
Freedom From Proprietary Prisons
Forking always an option
IBM's Watson Died in 1956, Now Watson Dies Again
IBM is becoming just a reseller of GAFAM and other stuff
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, UbuntuPIT, and Google News
We've also just noticed more slop from UbuntuPIT
Microsoft Says That Constant Mass Layoffs Are Success, the Media Isn't Buying This Microsoft Narrative Anymore
If people in the media feel an obligation to repeat whatever lies Microsoft tells, what point will there be to the media?
Links 08/10/2025: "Mali Puts Free Speech on Trial" And Apple Enforces Dictatorship
Links for the day
Links 08/10/2025: ‘Death to Spotify’ and Law to Ban Loud Commercials on Streaming (Dis)Services
Links for the day
Links 08/10/2025: Real Innovation and Nina.chat is Dead
Links for the day
Links 08/10/2025: Y2K38 Bug is a Vulnerability, Chat Control in Europe a Threat
Links for the day
Microsoft Windows is No Longer an Operating System, It's Surveillance Project
Why is this even legal to preload on PCs outside the US?
How and Why Once-Legitimate Sites Turn Into Slopfarms
Many sites will go offline and many social control networks will shut down once they realise or even openly admit they spend money and time gardening a bunch of bots and slop
UbuntuPIT Became a Slopfarm and Gnoppix Tarnishes Its Own Brand With Slop
It fits all the characteristics of mildly-edited (if at all) slop
Slopwatch: Linux Journal and Other Slopfarms
GAFAM needs to go the way of the dodo
Gemini Links 08/10/2025: "Seek Seek Revolution" and Gradient Backgrounds
Links for the day
Qualcomm Arduino Takes Aim at Raspberry Pi
Qualcomm is a Microsoft partner
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, October 07, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, October 07, 2025
Stagnation of the Economy and What Free Software Can (or Could) Do For It
If your economic model is based on a pyramid of lies, it won't last very long
Social Control Media is Sinking
it would rightly seem like the era of centralised "social" sites (they're not social, they're about controlling the users) is ending, not overnight but gradually