[E3-hacking] PBL V5.1

[David Ford]

On Wed, Oct 10, 2007 at 10:35:21AM +0100, Antony Stone wrote:
> 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.

I suspect that Amstrad would not be happy with this, since I suspect the
main purpose of the encryption was to prevent people using the device
other than with their source.