On Wednesday 10 October 2007 07:25, Alexander wrote:
"Please note that this is of special practical importance in the case of embedded devices, since the executable program(s) need to be somehow installed onto the device. If the user is not given a way to install his own (modified) versions of the program, he has no way of exercising his freedom to run modified versions of the program."
Agreed. That is what I want is just to run on your device modified version of Linux.
It occurs to me that Amstrad don't want to release the keys they've used to sign/encrypt their new code, however the new 5.1 bootloader won't accept unsigned/unenecrypted code, and therefore we get a sort of stalemate.
How would both Amstrad and the open source community here feel about the following proposal?
Amstrad provides a signed/encrypted (whatever is needed to get it to load onto a 5.1 device) copy of the 4.9 bootloader, so that it becomes possible to 'downgrade' a device to a state where we _can_ load our own open source code.
That way Amstrad keeps its keys, but the devices which were released running Linux remain open for us to use as the GPL requires.
Comments, people?
Antony.