Re: Niches for the Hurd: evaluation method; was: DRM musings, capabilities and stuff

[Arne Babenhauserheide]

Am Dienstag 30 Dezember 2008 14:04:52 schrieb Michal Suchanek:
> You need a special hardware to verify the integrity of the system, and
> I can imagine that in a modular system the hardware driver might work
> without modifications to the system  - think one of the initial
> servers loaded with the mach kernel.
>
> The driver itself need not be non-free, it would just reveal what
> version (or more precisely the exact bitwise checksum) of the system
> is running regardless of the actual version.

If that driver is non-free and I can't replace it, then the system locks down 
my software. 

If that driver is free, I can just give it a list of checksums of my changed 
software and checksums it should give for them instead. 

> However, for a general purpose system a random application
> malfunctioning cannot be blamed on the system. Otherwise no system
> would be allowed ;-)

Malfunctioning as soon as an irrelevant bit in the system changes can be 
blamed on the system, if the application gets the information that the bit 
changd from the system. 

> >  If I have to rewrite a nontrivial part of the system to make DRM
> > ineffective, then the system is clearly designed for allowing effective
> > DRM, and so it is treacherous.
>
> The Coyotos system is probably not complete enough at this point to
> argue about the challenge of implementing a capability for accessing
> all memory.

Then we can stop arguing about it right now and pick up the discussion again 
as soon as we can say something more definite about it. 

I'm interested in the Hurd, not in an incomplete system which has the 
potential to wreak havoc on our free environment. 

Best wishes, 
Arne
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