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