Re: [Fsfe-uk] Explanation of Tivosiation and problems - comments sought

[Alex Hudson]

On Mon, 2006-12-18 at 11:38 +0000, Ciaran O'Riordan wrote:
> Alex Hudson <address@hidden> writes:
> > if you're supplying firewalls to
> > people, and the firewalls are meddle-proof (which IMHO is a feature, in
> > this instance), you'd be more or less forced to provide per-user
> > binaries signed with different keys in order to comply (as I understand
> > it, anyway), which is a bit of a burden. I suppose there are likely
> > other technological solutions to that problem, though.
> 
> It is a trivial burden because it's automate-able.  Also we're only talking
> about hardware manufacturers - people who have accepted the much bigger
> burden of making a physical device.

We're not only talking about hardware manufacturers. Plenty of
businesses resell hardware devices with added services; the GPL
liability doesn't fall on the OEM of the hardware. Many resellers do
little to the hardware other than slapping their own label on it.

I would also disagree that maintaining a set of encryption keys for each
customer, plus the infrastructure to make available binary updates
tailored to each user (i.e., signed with their key), is a "trivial"
burden. Compared to hosting a set of binaries on an FTP site, it's
obviously more difficult by quite some way.

Cheers,

Alex.