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As a consequence of the uncovering of the boot restrictions the Microsoft Windows 8 Hardware Certification Requirements place on ARM PCs I wrote to my MEP, Linda McAvan. I'll summarise her reply:
"Whether or not there is a violation of European competition rules and in particular of Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, however, depends on a range of factual, legal and economic considerations which are difficult to assess before the product has been finalised and before any computers running the Windows 8 [sic] operating systems have been placed on the market."The reply goes on to reassure whoever the MEP was that the Commission would keep their eye on the matter.
Good news I hope you'll agree.
Glyn Moody of Computer World UK quotes Microsoft in his blog as saying that being able to unlock the UEFI lockdown on boot code is required [by Microsoft] for non-ARM devices but the opposite is true for ARM devices. This is in a December 2011 issue date document.
Time to share my opinion with my MEP that an ARM PC is still a PC.
It may seem strange to ask a question on a non-blog. But there you go. I'm sure you're up to the task of working out my email address or finding it. If you aren't well look at it this way, the difficulty has probably saved you from breaking the somewhat restrictive UK laws which require you to limit the nature of your communications. It is probably better not to face extradition for breaking some aspect of UK criminal law you didn't know existed.
Anyway there's a lot being said about the matter of UEFI 'secure boot' and GNU/Linux. The FSF have a campaign about it, Ross Anderson of Cambridge has blogged about it and Ed Bot of ZDNET and others have weighed in with all the intelligence one normally attributes to journalists.
Back to my question, it's fairly simple:
I ask this because my training on the subject is woefully out of date. I haven't worked for anybody for whom EU competition law was in anyway relevant since the mid-90s. But when I did it was IBM. For those who don't know it is a matter of history that IBM and the U.S. Department of Justice got entangled over what the DoJ was absolutely sure were anti-trust practises. The outcome of which was a document called by IBMers 'the consent decree.' One of the things IBM was bound to as a consequence of this was perpetual 100% compliance with the law. Naturally if you have to never ever ever break the law in any country (not even one tiny eensie weensie morsel) the very least you do is train people in what they definitely cannot do and make sure they run for the company lawyer if there is the slightest doubt.
I am not a lawyer. In fact I'll say that again a little more loudly I am not a lawyer just to make the point. The training I got was very clear - those in a position of market dominance in a 'region' cannot alter the market, that is 'the playing field' to the detriment of the competition. It was explained that EU case law had interpreted this to mean that technical standards, explicitly including de facto standards could not be influenced by market dominators so as to disadvantage the competition. I had assumed that this was the reason for the OOXML investigation. Further it had been established that a market dominators simply doing something that was followed by a large number of others on the playing field could itself be tampering with the playing field. That is the laissez-faire capitalism argument of 'well yeah we did that but the free market had a choice, we don't control that' was explicitly ruled as effectively a null argument in EU case law. At that time the onus was very much on market dominators to make sure that they did not disadvantage the competition in any action that effects the market. I repeat I am not a lawyer, I have told you three times.
Has the law changed? Or is Microsoft going to try and argue that it is not a market dominator? that Windows Compatibility Logo programmes are not a de facto technical standard for PCs? Or that somehow UEFI safe boot doesn't fundamentally attack the predicate of Linux kernel (a large number of competitors) development methodology that anyone equipped with a PC can write a driver or a modification to the kernel and load and test their own kernel build? Or have they undisclosed plans to ensure the same market prevalence and price of PCs with that capability? Plus of course plans to ensure that every new distro can build a 'safe boot' kernel that anyone can use. Seems an awful lot to go through when all you have to do is alter the logo programme to mandate purchaser control over whether 'safe boot' is used or not as a firmware feature.
Could some current staff IBMer email me and say what their current training is? I assume at the end of the consent decree the DoJ didn't throw away the perpetual nature of the 100% law compliance that made the training necessary. Or anyone who is prepared to tell me what the current position is? Given I accept it is not advice and I won't pay for anything.
...caffeine. Had my first dose of real coffee in months yesterday and was microblogging within the hour after not having done it since last I was on the stuff. Clearly an entire research career in such linkage.
I have, quite frankly, got fully tired of not having a website I can just bung files on. It isn't as though the blog was getting any real use by me. There's also the fact that when you use blogging software on your website you are inviting others to treat it as 'content' when it is in fact writing. I am, therefore, turning this site into my own personal 'Sprawl.'
Copyright © 2011 & 2012 Andrew M. Lindley
