PC UEFI & Microsoft Monopoly

This page: http://berklix.org/uefi/

PC manufacturers will label most of their PCs towards end of 2012 as Windows 8 certified - Which would appear to mean: UEFI Crippled By Microsoft's monopoly business associates To NOT Run Free Software.

Summary

The PC Hardware + Microsoft Windows 8 with UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) will monopolise amd64 hardware. If you (or your OS project/supplier) make your own kernels for amd64, you will not be able to boot them (unless you buy a key from a company working with the monopoly, or possibly go to arcane efforts, a deterent to free choice & supply).

Detail

http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-questions/2012-June/241732.html
"Is this something we (as consumers of FreeBSD) need to be aware of? - FreeBSD mail list thread".
Later in thread, (another thought on EU)
http://cwonline.computerworld.com/t/8035515/1292406/565573/0/
"Fedora Linux capitulates to Microsoft boot certificate
To run on UEFI-secured machines, the next version of Fedora will use a digital key from Microsoft - By Joab Jackson May 31, 2012 "
http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/12368.html "Implementing UEFI Secure Boot in Fedora - Matthew Garrett"
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-questions/2012-June/241837.html
"UEFI Secure Boot Specs - And some sanity"
Which references:
- http://www.uefi.org/
  Spec Chapter 27 Secure Boot, SetupMode, PK, Shell, etc
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Extensible_Firmware_Interface
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_EFI_Forum
- http://ozlabs.org/docs/uefi-secure-boot-impact-on-linux.pdf
- https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/secure-boot-vs-restricted-boot
- http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/12368.html
- http://mjg59.livejournal.com/
- https://www.tianocore.org/
- http://www.avrfreaks.net/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=viewtopic&p=962584
Software Freedom Day - mail list
More URLs welcome - by email

Politicians & Officials to be contacted re. anti monopoly & restraint of trade etc regulation.

European Union: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Commissioner_for_Trade
EU has fined MS before re. monopoly, ( "NY Times: Europe Fines Microsoft $1.3 Billion" Maybe EU will be interested again.
USA: Government contacts re. restraint of trade, anti monopolies ? - URLS welcome, by email
Other Countries - info welcome, by email

Activists To Contact Politicians & Officials

Note, for this its no good using emotive words, one must be able to explain in business language why monopoly abuse via UEFI is bad for the nation states, (even if its good for a computer industry monopolist with lots of employees inc. security specialists (Huh!), advertisers, lobyists & lawyers.

I would be happy to contact EU when we consider appropriate.
USA : Who Volunteers ? Contacts welcome - by email
Other countries: Contacts welcome - by email

A sample text to contact politicians & officials with

Very brief draft sample text to post/ phone them with, probably via paper post or phone, not via email direct to spam box ;-) Text Welcome by email
Text should be similar to summary above, or vice versa.

URLS (links) to other similar pages

Welcome by email

Maybe later this page should migrate elsewhere, eg to FreeBSD foundation or FreeBSD Wiki, or some Linux etc site.