Eric W. Biederman wrote:
Steve Gehlbach steve@nexpath.com writes:
Vincent Touquet wrote:
Not sure if the Phoenix DRM BIOS fits into this picture.
I suspect the Xbox is your clue... MS has had plenty of practice on encrypting the bios and locking out foreign app sw, and the xboxlinux group has been the test foil (although in the short run they are on top right now).
Boards don't sell if people won't buy them.
Eric
I think people will buy if them if they are cheap enough. Imagine a mobo that only runs Win2k and sells (in a system) for cost, like the Xbox, where the revenue stream is the license fees for software, shared by the mfr and distributor.
The implications for linuxbios is that any reverse engineering to determine chip function is a violation of DMCA (because of the encryption), with stiff penalties. The reverse engineering exception may apply, but this DMCA exeception does not allow public dissemination of the information that is discovered (see Judge Kaplan's opinion in the DeCSS case). Via is already making it hard enough without encryption.
My worry is that this is prong two of a two prong aproach to slowing Linux down by MS. The other being the SCO license FUD.
-Steve