On Wed, 2010-03-31 at 16:40 -0400, Eric Paris wrote:
Long ago we were ask to enable CONFIG_INTEL_TXT in the fedora kernels
by
a large user, the US National Security Agency:
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/kernel/2009-October/002228.html
At the time the objection to this configuration option was that the
technology was all predicated on a closed source binary blob signed by
Intel. In private discussions it was learned that there was no chance
that the module would ever be open sourced and we learned that hardware
is not capable of recognizing signatures of a module from other vendors
(aka Fedora can't sign our own version.) However, in light of a recent
public statement from IBM:
http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/devel/2010-March/133089.html
We see that at least one hardware vendor has been listening to our
objections to closed source software and has agreed to re-architect how
they implement their systems so that our users will not need to download
and install any closed source proprietary software. They agreed to make
any changes necessary to their BIOS (UEFI) to support this technology
without the need for the separate closed source proprietary Intel signed
blob. Red Hat has ask other hardware vendors to follow the admirable
lead set by IBM if they have any interest in being supported by the open
source community.
I'm not reading that from the IBM message you linked. Do you have some
other source for this statement?
- ajax