Dear <Your name should be here ;-) >, I have been considering the implications for BSD and Linux and any non-MS O/S of the implementation of UEFI Secure Boot (SB).
As I understand it, ARM devices wishing to receive Win8 cert are required to enable SB by default and prevent the disabling of SB. Meanwhile, x86 devices are supposed to ship with SB enabled but allow disabling... For some commentators, the x86 situation has been presented as MS leaving a back-door for other OSes such as BSD or Linux etc. i.e. "Don't worry about it" I think it is, in fact, that MS is seeking to temporarily provide a back-door for Win XP, Vista and Win7. As each MS OS reaches end-of-paid-for-support (e.g. XP in 2014) MS will slowly relax the UEFI SB specification such that the ability to disable SB will gradually disappear from x86-based devices. I am surprised that there is so little discussion of this developing situation on BSD and/or Linux lists because for me, the red lights are flashing, all bells and hooters are sounding, "We gotta get out of here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" We are potentially talking about the end of BSD (or Linux...) on x86 hardware. Am I overly pessimistic? Have I missed something? OR Am I Jeremiah shouting "There's a flood coming! There's a f****** flood coming, PEOPLE!" while everybody else is roasting sausages on their barbecues? Mike
