Re: Flame Linus to a crisp!

[Riley Williams]

Hi all.

 >>> For those not aware, each and every kernel you download from 
 >>> K.O is DRM signed as a means to authenticate purity.

 >> Yup. And pretty much every official .rpm or .deb package (source
 >> and binary) is already signed by the company that made that
 >> package, for _your_ protection. This is already "accepted
 >> practice", so allowing signing is not something new per se,
 >> including on a binary level.

 > Sure, but today a signed kernel from $vendor doesn't prevent me
 > from running a program I compiled myself, the signature only
 > shows me that the kernel in fact came from $vendor and if I trust
 > that vendor, I can now trust that kernel. 

===8<=== CUT ===>8===

 > In the near future I'm worried about the fact that I could become
 > second class netizen if I don't run a signed $large_linux_vendor
 > kernel and userspace chain all the way up to a signed mozilla. I
 > quite like paying my bills on-line.

Unless I'm misreading the aim of this discussion to date, the result
of this whole flame-thread is quite simple:

 1. At the moment, verification companies such as VeriSign have an
    uphill struggle to get people to sign up with them, as people
    are in general willing to trust each other.

 2. The initiative that Linus started this thread about appears to
    be an attempt to maximise their profits by making every Thomas,
    Richard and Henry sign up with all of them in case they wish
    to run their own software.

 3. As a side-effect of this, every software house in the world is
    to be faced with a bill from each of the verification agencies
    to be permitted to verify their software, probably with annual
    renewal fees, the aim being to force all such software houses
    out of business so Microsoft and their cronies can relax.

Pardon me for my cynicism, but to me, this is just "more of the
same" rubbish that we have had to put up with from Micro$oft for
far too many years...

Best wishes from Riley.