On 2 October 2011 21:57, Dave Anderson <d...@daveanderson.com> wrote: > In the absence of biasing factors I think you're right, but AFAICT what > some people are concerned about is Microsoft _requiring_ vendors to lock > down the boot process in this way in order to put a 'Windows 8 approved' > (or whatever exactly it is) sticker on a system. Given the benefits to > the vendor of participating in that program, it's plausible that many of > them would do this despite its pissing off some customers. Whether or > not Microsoft would actually do something this blatant I don't know, but > as far as I can tell they've never seen an anti-competetive techinque > that they didn't _want_ to use. > > Dave
I think Microsoft et al. will be able to just count on vendor laziness and incompetence yielding at least some Windows-only UEFI hardware. If Microsoft at all feel that they even need to actively do anything anymore that goes beyond enabling laziness and incompetence, then I think that it's probably far more likely that anything from their side will be vague and hand-wavy, with companies which do produce Windows-only hardware mysteriously, surprisingly finding that they're most favoured vendors who can get better deals out of Microsoft, etc. Microsoft probably know better than actually inking some written OEM/vendor agreement that can be leaked on Halloween. And yes, I do think there is a threat, even in the absence of overtly conspiratorial activity. And I think that things could get particularly bad in jurisdictions that do or would criminalise the circumvention of DRM in order to run OpenBSD on otherwise Windows-only hardware. But I'm not a developer, so... regards, --ropers
