On Thu, Jun 7, 2012 at 6:14 PM, Przemek Klosowski
<przemek.klosowski(a)nist.gov> wrote:
What is Fedora ARM planning to do about the upcoming Microsoft
hardware
certification spec requiring Secure Boot? By the spec, there must be a way
to disable it on x86, but on ARM they expressly prohibit turning it off. I
guess the current Fedora/RedHat stance, as explained by Matthew Garrett, is
to obtain a MS certificate covering x86 and presumably ARM kernels from
Fedora, but this doesn't help respins and mods and even custom
kernels---more likely on ARM because of the its relative newness and faster
pace of development.
People pointed out that MS hardware requirements for ARM don't have anwhere
near the market coverage/importance as in the x86 sector, so they argue that
it's OK to ignore the issue. Indeed, currently majority of ARM hardware just
doesn't care about MS, but Secure Boot is a reflection of the industry trend
seeking more security (*) so it's conceivable that more digital signing is
in ARM's future, too.
So, what is the current thinking?
The current thinking is wait and see. MS is not a leader in the market
and the route that most vendors are going in the non MS ARM market is
to allow users to disable the security. From the phone perspective
where it might be a carrier requirement it's not a market we're even
looking at and it's very hard to tell because it's very early in the
MS section of the game anyway. Also at the moment there's lots of very
usable HW which isn't a problem.
Peter