Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
User Journal

Journal Sanity's Journal: CLTD 15

Journal by Sanity
Time for my Crazy Late-night Thought of the Day:

Much as the GPL turns copyright against itself, could trusted computing be turned against itself by creating a class of software that doesn't run on computers where trusted computing is turned on?

Food for thought.... perhaps....

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

CLTD More

CLTD

Comments Filter:
  • I'd never thought of that.

    Imagine if Apache, PHP, etc. wouldn't run on a Trusted Computer - it could instantly sink it, at least in the server market.

    There'd be less of an impact on the desktop market, as it's still mainly Windows...

    • Re:ooh! (Score:2)

      by turg ( 19864 ) *
      But those are open source programs. Someone could just alter the code (would probably just mean deleting the routine that detects the Trusted Computer). You could make it difficult to do this but eventually someone would and you'd have a fork for no good reason (it's a good cause, but the fork would be the only real result of taking this action which is a bad reason to have a fork)
      • I thought the whole reason that trusted computer is bad was that open source developers don't have the money to have their binaries signed to run on a trusted system. Eg, in order for anything to run on a trusted system, the binaries need to have some kind of certificate that says the computer should run the binary. The certification process will of course be costly, which would essentially nullify the Open Source development style, as you'd have to pay through the nose just to make one binary allowed to ru
        • Well, that's what the Slashbots would have you believe.

          In reality, it'd just be a little dialog box saying "Microsoft doesn't vouch for this - install at your own risk". Windows XP already does that for a few things, like some video drivers IIRC.
        • It's not just about money. It's about control and trust. Who watches the watchers?

          P.S. You are making the classic misunderstanding of "Free Software == free beer, not free speech". It is of course both, but the latter is quite important and not just for preserving the former.

          --LP
          • No, no.

            The reason Open Source is so great right now is because developers have the freedom to tinker and cooperate, unrestricted. Try some changes, recompile, test it. With trusted computing, unsigned binaries won't run, you won't be able to test your changes freely. You'd have to spend lots of money getting the binary signed, only to find out you have some major flaw, so you fix it, recompile, spend money to have it resigned, etc. It's prohibitively expensive for most developers.

            In fact, the only people

      • Not... (Score:1, Troll)

        by Sanity ( 1431 ) *
        ...if the code's license didn't permit removal of that routine (just as the GPL doesn't permit removal of the GPL license).
        • I don't know if such a condition would be allowable under the official definition of Open Source. It certainly wouldn't be compatible with the GPL (or any other Open Source licence that I'm familiar with)
          • I don't know if such a condition would be allowable under the official definition of Open Source. It certainly wouldn't be compatible with the GPL (or any other Open Source licence that I'm familiar with)
            Obviously it would require a new type of license.

            • Yes, and what I'm saying is that I don't think it would match the definition of an open source licence [opensource.org].

              Here's the parts that I see giving you trouble on this -- to be recognized as open source, the software:

              • (#3) must allow derived works. Don't know whether making this one restriction on derived works (you must include this routine) would pass this test.
              • #4 seems to suggest that the only allowed restriction on modifications is to say that modifications must be distributed as patches along with the original
  • Much as the GPL turns copyright against itself, could trusted computing be turned against itself by creating a class of software that doesn't run on computers where trusted computing is turned on?

    The only problem would be that this software would have to be so popular that the people who want to run it will replace their hardware, costing them money, just to run the software. Unless you can think of something *really* spectacular, people will just give up trying to run the software, and just use whatever

    • Re:Problem (Score:1, Troll)

      by Sanity ( 1431 ) *
      The only problem would be that this software would have to be so popular that the people who want to run it will replace their hardware
      No, it only needs to be popular enough to prevent them from replacing their (non-DRM) hardware with DRM hardware.
  • 1) Yes. Interesting thought.
    2) It wouldn't be GPLed, now would it.
    3) Trusted computing can be used for good purposes as well as bad ones. A better goal than destroying trusted computing is to figure out how to make the good results occur more often than the bad ones.

    And you're full of interesting ideas. So keep thinking :)

Slashdot Top Deals

Life is a healthy respect for mother nature laced with greed.

Close