MS to eradicate GPL, hence Linux

Yesterday, as we all know, Microsoft fed an 'exclusive' story about its new 'Palladium' DRM/PKI Trust Machine to Newsweek hack Steven Levy (a guy who writes without irony of "high-level encryption"), presumably because they trusted him not to grasp the technology well enough to question it seriously. His un-critical announcement immediately sparked a flurry of articles considering what this means to the Windows user base.

And that's as it should be. But my question is, what does it mean to the Linux user base?

Well, of course no one knows yet; the Levy article is long on generalized promises but very short on details. We know that some hardware element will be involved -- some hardened slice of silicon on the mobo which will identify the computer and the user, and recognize other computers and their users. It, or a companion chip, will interface with some manner of PKI, current or future, so that only 'authorized' applications may run with privileges. MS wants us to think that the 'authorizer' will be the user, but we know better: there will undoubtedly be a DRM element in it, and its authorizations will override yours. There will also be a networking component, involving an elaborate PKI and vast data warehouses run by MS and its trusted partners.

So let's say Intel and AMD begin shipping Palladium-compliant boards as MS begins shipping the software to OEMs and shops. And let's say that the Redmond spin campaign, persuading users that this is actually for their benefit, takes hold, and consumer demand for the scheme begins to grow and it eventually becomes a de facto standard, like SSL today, for example.

Got root?
All right then, how do we get Linux and open-source servers and apps to work with networks using this master scheme? What changes will be necessary?

The first thing that comes to mind is the difficulty of getting my Apache Web server to work seamlessly with Harry Homeowner's Windoze box when he comes to my site for some eminently trustworthy business. Everything I download to him (and this may even include Web pages -- the scheme is that far-reaching) will have some manner of digital cert which MS and its family of cronies will have established beforehand. I don't see a problem here. The certs will be embedded in the content and I'm merely providing space for it to reside. Even pages and images can be digitally signed and Harry's box can simply accept them or not according to rules he's worked out for himself.

But what if Harry needs to transact business and/or send me something? Then I think it gets tricky for two reasons. First, I have to be able to assure him that I can't read what he sends (and neither can the script kiddies who root my site monthly), and second, I'll probably have to pass part of it along 'safely' (as defined by MS) to some other network under Redmond suzerainty where the bulk of Harry's whole life's data is stored and continually updated. And of course I'll need access to that data so I can be sure Harry is Harry and his Mark of the Beast (or whatever MS will call his Uniform Identifier) is valid.

So to validate Harry, and to update his Master Data File -- two bits of business integral to the Palladium scheme -- I'll need hardware, an OS and a server compliant with Redmond specs. Now MS says they're going to make the sources to the core of this technology open. But considering Microsoft's white-knuckled terror of Linux and open source products in general, combined with its established penchant for mining its products with hidden little pissers for the competition, I don't think it's paranoid to imagine that I may have to turn to a packaged product from a major MS partner/collaborator or a Linux distributor who's gone to the bother of obtaining certs for the kernel and the apps. But either way we'll have major GPL problems, as we'll see below. Indeed, this is going to be something of a reductio ad absurdum.

This certification scheme will rip the guts out of the GPL. That is, the minute I begin tinkering with my software, my ability to interface with the Great PKI in the Sky will be broken. I'll have a Linux box with a GPL, all right; but if I exercise the license in any meaningful way I'll render my system 'unauthorized for Palladium' and lose business. So instead, I imagine I'll be turning to my vendor for support, updates, modifications and patches. And I'll be dependent on them for support services at whatever price they can wheedle out of me because I dare not lose my Palladium authorization. I wonder if the cost of ownership of an open-source system will actually be lower than the cost of a proprietary system under such circumstances.

If MS can't wipe out Linux, at least they can throw their marketing might and obscene quantities of cash into the project of castrating and controlling it by rendering the commons hostile to Linux users who still have their balls. They can in a sense create a huge market for open/closed hybrids, just as I imagined above: a system that comes with a GPL which I dare not exercise, and with considerable costs of both purchase and ownership. Even Dell might get into the castrated Linux act when they see what sort of stranglehold the Palladium scheme will enable them to place on it.

But here's the diabolical bit. Linux distributors are going to lose big time if they remain faithful to the GPL. Palladium will either break the GPL, or if not, break Linux.

Harry's lament
I fully expect to see Linux on the desktop growing rapidly in the next several years. The major distros like SuSE and Mandrake are coming along nicely with classic Harry features like automatic updates. Hardware detection is getting better by the day. Open Office is rapidly approaching the point where it imports from and exports to MS office without difficulty. The 2.4.x kernel is finally showing signs of the 2.2.x's legendary stability. The KDE desktop is looking sharp and working nicely now with version 3.0. Mozilla is coming along wonderfully. And now Red Hat says it intends to commit seriously to the desktop market.

As the obstacles to Windows migration fall away, inherent virtues like better security and privacy (your Linux box does not automatically connect to servers at Microsoft whenever you search your hard disk, for example), freedom to configure, redemption from the MS update crack-addiction, and low cost of ownership will strike more chords with the computing public.

This terrifies MS as much as the enterprise Lintel phenomenon. And it's not just cost rationale at play here. There's a revelation in store for users once they have something to compare their Windows eXPerience against. As home users come to use and understand Linux, they'll automatically begin to perceive what a parasite Microsoft really is.

The answer to this will be more parasitism: Palladium is a means of infesting the commons with hostile digital fauna. As these new services and applications become more plentiful, the need for the Linux desktop to deal with them according to Redmond spec will increase as well.

Kernel hackers will have their hands full figuring that one out. How do you make Linux interface with a security chip in such a way that untrusted applications are sandboxed without taking root away from the machine's owner? I think the answer is, 'you can't,' and I imagine Redmond thinks so too. And what will Palladium mean to application development? More overhead, that's what. Certification authorities charge for their services. Some applications in development may have to be scrapped due to the costs of certification.

Eventually, as Palladium contagion spreads, the home Linux box will need certified open-source apps to run DR-managed content. Here goes the GPL again. So I've got this certified app. Fine. I've got the sources. Fine. What happens if I decide to build my own binaries? They won't be certified. They won't work. So what does the GPL mean to me then? It means I can build, or modify and build, an application which will lack the digital cert which it needs in order to run the content it was designed to run. Only the binaries will be certified (as a moment's reflection will make obvious). This is a nail in the GPL's coffin. Yes, I can improve the app and give away or maybe even sell my improved version; but first I have to prove that it qualifies for certification, and second I have to pay for the cert. And when I release it, source and all, only the certified binary will function.

The entire concept of root will be out the window. If I build my own or re-compile my existing kernel, my certs won't work. I won't be permitted to log in to the Microsoft Digital Empire or any of its numerous colonies because that little chip on my mobo is going to freak out. Perhaps even my certified apps will fail to run. And I can no longer present my Uniform Identifier at the digital immigration turnstiles which MS will be setting up as I meander through cyberspace. "Sorry, we don't know who you are; you'll have to turn back...."

So how is this going to work in practical terms? Will the Linux distributors release certified kernels and apps and utilities? I don't see how they can avoid it. But what happens to the GPL in that case? Will the certification authorities decline to certify the distro if the kernel and app sources are included? Or will the machine simply lose its Palladium authorization and fail to work properly if apps or the kernel are re-compiled or built from external sources?

Either way, the GPL is perverted. Any GPL'd kernel, utility, application, whatever, that's designed to be Palladium compliant will have to be distributed without certified sources. There's simply no way to ensure that a source archive can only be used to build compliant binaries, unless GCC is deliberately broken in some radical way and the security hardware won't allow other compilers to run (except similarly broken ones).

Will there be a hybrid Linux/hardware package coming out to address this? A sort of black box -- a mere desktop appliance not unlike an X-Box or a Palladium-enabled Windoze box -- with no compiler, and only user privileges, and some hardware chip that prevents modifications to any of the binaries except by digitally- signed RPMs pre-approved for Palladium compliance? That means basically that MS has got root on my machine, and of course it would rip the guts out of the GPL to boot. [Reader Stephen Crane points out that Rule Set Based Access Control (RSBAC) might well suit such a product, which would then make MS not root but the 'Security Officer' of my Linux machine.]

It's the very fact that this appears insoluble to me that helps me realize that MS has put tremendous, careful thought into it. To make the commons Linux-hostile, MS is taking dramatic steps to make it GPL-hostile. Very clever and admirably diabolical.

Of course here I'm assuming Palladium won't become the next Microsoft Bob. It could meet with severe consumer rejection, as I hope it will. And so we end with a question for lawyers, not for me: is a technically-valid, letter-of-the-law GPL which you can't practically exercise violated or not? You've got your sources and everything in the distro is GPL'd -- only any binaries you choose to build on your own will isolate you from the commons. I think MS believes it's found a loophole here. Whether it will work or not is another question.

I used to use Linux. Somehow KDE recently died; if I try to log into it I get a complaint, after some time, that a process isn't running. maybe i could try gnome . . . never thought of that possibility for getting control of things.

I was a user of VAX/VMS timesharing in the old days, so the principle of command-line interface isn't abhorrent to me--but I find that when you don't have coworkers around to consult, getting up to speed on an unfamiliar sys becomes problematic pretty fast . . .

I'm certain that somewhere in this article is a kernel of fact. I'm even certain that the author may be correct in his assumption that MS has developed a plan to "discourage" Linux implementations in favor of their products. In the bizzaro land of reasoning that is Linux-world, this is wrong. Apparently, manufacturers with major market share are not allowed to use that leverage to make things difficult for their competition. Before anyone gets offended, merely using Linux or having confidence in it as a web server does not automatically make you an inhabitant of Linux-world. You have to believe in the MS-conspiracy to live there.

However, when the author wraps his case in a venom-spewing, accusation filled rant, I have difficulty taking him seriously. And when he throws in ridiculous statements like " Linux will be on the desktop in two years", he just sounds like some geek on crack. I'm getting an image of him re-arranging his Boba Fett figurines while muttering under his breath about "evil Microsoft".

Are we supposed to be stupid or gullible enough to find this rant believable?

Flame suit on.....

And when he throws in ridiculous statements like " Linux will be on the desktop in two years", he just sounds like some geek on crack.

Well, to give him some credit, I believe that it will be on the desktop in two years also--possibly sooner. I currently run KDE 3.0 on a Red Hat 7.3 system and it is as good as (if not better) than Windows.

Now--whether MS is actually smart enough to come up with something like this, or "evil" enough to try it is another question altogether. I'm not sure I would go that far.

Granted the tone was a bit harsh, but the basic premise was
reasonable.

From a purely business point-of-view, it would be insanity
for MS to *not* want to eliminate linux. You hint at that
and yet scoff at the thought that MS would do it? :)

I don't think liunx (and I'm using it as well as several other flavors of unix) will be "the" desktop in 2 years...
more like 10. It's currently making major inroads in Asia
and Europe... as well as the US.

Their reason is that they trust MS less than the "geeks"
to whom you refer, and with good reason. If I was the
CIA etc., I'd certainly try to get backdoors embedded.
National Security and all that.

Since the source is shipped with linux, it would be more
difficult to hide a trapdoor.

And you apparently have some idea of what you are doing. Being completely honest, do you realistically think any company will move to a UNIX-based OS as their primary desktop? I'm not talking about 4-person development shops, I'm talking about Merril-Lynch type offices.

The majority of office workers are "point and click" users that don't have the slightest idea of how to manage simple taks like connecting to a printer. Finding the START button is an arduous tak for some of these folks. You move these folks to Linux, and productivity grinds to a halt while support (help desk, desktop visitation) costs go through the roof. Where is the IT bean-counter that's going to recommend that?

If the IT group moves to Linux as the company web server, or runs authentication through it where the users have no direct interaction, that's one thing. But on the desktops? I just don't see it happening.

I don't see the big shops going to Linux any time soon. While KDE provides the "point-and-click" interface the majority of users have come to expect, most shops still want someone to hold liability for that same desktop.

The conversion (if done correctly) would probably be a lot less painful than you might think. I am currently using OpenOffice 1.0 on Windows and Linux, and have not yet encountered a Word file that could not be read and saved in that same format by OpenOffice. The same goes for Excel (with some pretty nice macros in there).

Again, I don't see it happening soon, but the tech has evolved to a point now where it is feasible.

What this is about is giving digital content producers (think books, software, music, whatever can go in a file) the ability to publish directly to an individual (or group?) without worrying for the time being that the content will be copied and shared. You have the right to enter into an agreement with a content provider not to share the content. What this kind of embedded, undiscovereable private key does is make such an agreement enforceable without using force.

If you don't want to enter into an agreement not to share or republish content, then don't.

Embedded crypto technology actually enables the little guy to protect his work. Right now only those with the bucks to use force, legal or otherwise, have any protection.

As a content provider, you can choose whether to sell or give away your work. Without protection of property, you can't choose; you can only give it away.

By the way, it also seems clear to me that all of your characterizations of "venom-spewing rants" and "bizzaro land of reasoning" are, in reference to the article, at worse, outright false, at best hyperbole... But they seem to be quite accurate if applied to your own post.

Try this in your home directory:

rm .DCOP*
rm .ICE*

Then, try to start KDE. Should fix that problem.

Granted the tone was a bit harsh, but the basic premise was reasonable.
From a purely business point-of-view, it would be insanity for MS to *not* want to eliminate linux. You hint at that and yet scoff at the thought that MS would do it? :)

I did no such thing. I clearly stated that MS ( or any manufacturer with a major share of the market) would do anything it could to makes things difficult for its competition.

And I'm not knocking Linux, I think it has a lot of practical uses. I start to lose it with these guys when their preference of OS borders on religious fervor. I would like to read an article that does a little more than attach "good" and "evil" to operating systems, and this one clearly does not.

The tone that (some) Linux fans use to describe MS borders on zealotry and reeks of envy. I see some of these guys being angry with their boss because he gets to decide the pay scale and they don't.

Being completely honest, do you realistically think any company will move to a UNIX-based OS as their primary desktop? I'm not talking about 4-person development shops, I'm talking about Merril-Lynch (sic) type offices.

Being completely honest, Yes. Merrill Lynch is doing exactly that.

You picked a bad example. LOL

Congratulations, you can spot the obvious. Or, if you don't think the author of this screed sounds a little unhinged, maybe you can't.

Linux doesn't have to be a religion, it can just be an OS with practical uses.

Being completely honest, Yes. Merrill Lynch is doing exactly that. LOL

Don't laugh so fast. ML is replacing their UNIX systems with Linux to reduce costs -

This contrasts with Unix in that developers write software for every version of Unix, including for tools and patches. This approach, says Carey, is time-consuming and expensive. If a Unix project doesn't work out for some reason, the technology is rarely transferable to another project.

You need to read the article. However, this fits nicely with what I've been saying, the OS does have its uses. But as the main desktop? I don't think so.

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