Is this something we (as consumers of FreeBSD) need to be aware of?

[Jerry]

On Wed, 06 Jun 2012 11:47:11 +0100
Matthew Seaman articulated:

>On 06/06/2012 11:24, Jerry wrote:
>> I think you are in error there Matthew. From what I have read The $99
>> goes to Verisign, not Microsoft - further once paid you can sign as
>> many binaries as you want.
>
>Having to pay Verisign instead of Microsoft makes no difference: the
>point is why should I have to pay anything to a third party in order to
>run whatever OS I want on a piece of hardware I own?
>
>$99 as a one-off payment might seem a trivial cost to you, so much so
>that you rather rashly promised to pay that for anyone. I won't hold
>you to it.  Even so, there are several thousand readers of this list.
>I doubt even you could afford to subsidise very many of them...

The $99 was for FreeBSD to deliver the OS, not per user. This is
clearly explained in the various URLs listed in this thread. I am sorry
if you misunderstood. Of course if a user wants to recompile the
kernel, etcetera after having downloaded and installed it from FreeBSD
or one of its subsidies, they are on their own. Seriously though, a
one time payment of $99 is so trivial I find it hard to believe that
anyone is actually bitching about it. I pay many times that amount for
golf every month.

>Yes UEFI Secure Boot may have been around for 8 years.  The fact that
>no one has adopted use of it in all that time speaks volumes.

I don't want to get in an argument with you Matthew since you are one of
the few on this list that I feel actually thinks before they speak and
knows what they are talking about; however, the real reason, in my
opinion, is that no one carefully considered the consequences of it. It
is a great idea, it offers greater security and again from what I have
read it can be disabled by the end user if the vendor so allows.
Microsoft does not control the vendors right to allow or disallow that
action.

In any event, it won't belong before some hacker comes up with a way
to circumvent the entire process anyway, In my opinion, so why worry
about it. Most FreeBSD users do not use state of the art equipment
anyway, so it may be years before they even come up against this
problem. By then it will all be ironed out.

-- 
Jerry ♔

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