Re: Flame Linus to a crisp!

Adrian Bunk
2003-04-24T22:39:59Z

On Wed, Apr 23, 2003 at 10:43:37PM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
>...
> And hey, the fact is (at least as far as I'm concerned), that as long as
> you make the hardware, you can control what it runs.
>...

Linux is currently widely used and through this there comes some power.
Let me try to make examples where this might be important:

Fact is:
Cryptographic hardware isn't science fiction. It's not an unsolvable
technical problem to build a computer and to ensure that only
$signed_kernel with $binary_only_module loaded and no other modules
loaded runs on this computer.

Two examples that might make it very important whether the licence of
Linux allows things like:
1. all the companies participating in TCPA agree that only selected
signed kernels run on future hardware
2. [less likely] a big country like the USA makes a law that every OS
must include a backdoor that allows unnoticed access for the NSA (it
sounds strange but considering the DMCA and current legislative
proposals in the USA I wouldn't say this is completely impossible)

That's the point where the fact that Linux is used in many companies
including big ones becomes important:

For companies it wouldn't be a big problem to use only signed kernels in
a scenario like the first one above (because of support rules of
companies like Oracle or SAP they are already often tied to some
specific kernels) if the licence of Linux allows it.

If the licence of Linux doesn't allow this it would make many of the big
companies using Linux to opposers of such a proposal.

> Linus

cu
Adrian

--

"Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
"Only a promise," Lao Er said.
Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed