[Fwd: SuitWatch - December 30]
Stefano Canepa
sc@linux.it
Dom 31 Dic 2006 15:47:08 CET
------- Messaggio inoltrato -------
Da: SuitWatch <docs-newsletter@ssc.com>
A: suitwatch@ssc.com
Oggetto: SuitWatch - December 30
Data: Thur, 30 Dec 2006 18:32:00 -0600
SuitWatch -- December 30, 2006
______________________________________________________
How to build the Linux Box For Everybody in 2007
Time Magazine closed 2006 by naming You its Person of the Year:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html. The
subhead exclaimed, "Yes, you. You control the Information Age. Welcome to
your world."
Not so fast.
Allow me to present some evidence to the contrary before making an
affirmative claim that Time will be right one year from now - when we have a
popular Linux laptop.
First, go read A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection, by Peter
Gutmann: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt. The
piece is chock full of juicy pull-quotes, topmost of which is its Executive
Executive Summary: "The Vista Content Protection specification could very
well constitute the longest suicide note in history." The public sources he
sites are appended below.
Seems Vista's "content protection" requirements will force hardware makers
to do several awful things at once, mostly by burning DRM into hardware.
Needless to say, this will screw up things for Linux's customary hermit-crab
approach to running on generic hardware. Because, if Microsoft succeeds,
there won't be generic hardware. White boxes won't be able to run Vista.
They'll only run Vista's ancestors and competitors. Vista-ready boxes will
be white in the manner of Apple's: in color only.
For those of us old enough to remember, this approach calls to mind IBM's
suicidal Microchannel bus, back in the late 80s. Microchannel was a PC
backplane lock-in strategy that rode to market inside a Trojan Horse of
improvements over the aging PC (ISA) bus. The Microchannel horse was
transparent as well as lame, and the market didn't buy it. Instead the
market eventually bought the PCI bus, which was open and useful for
everybody.
Microsoft hides its hardware lock-in strategy inside a transparent Trojan
Horse of "protection" for "premium content". As we know, "premium content"
is produced mostly by the entertainment industry. Not by You. Thus the Vista
Content Protection spec is a kiss for Hollywood and a fart for everybody
else.
For more on the whole mess, follow links from Windows Vista: Suicide notes,
nerdcore rap MP3
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/12/24/windows_vista_suicid.html, at
BoingBoing.
Next, go read World Domination 201
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/world-domination/world-domination-201.html,
by Eric S. Raymond and Rob Landley. Basically, they say 64-bit
computing is a wide-open race. "What will replace 32 bit Windows as the next
dominant OS has yet to be decided", they say. Also, "The three contenders
for the new 64-bit standard are Windows-64, MacOS X, and Linux. The winner
will be determined by desktop market share, the bulk of which consists of
non-technical end users."
In other words, it's ours to win. And by 'ours' I don't mean just the Linux
community. We're talking about everybody here. Because none of us - not even
our non-technical brethren - wants to be locked into a vendor silo. And the
only one of those three contenders that isn't a vendor is Linux.
Eric and Rob list some of the Things That Need To Be Done if Linux wins this
thing for the rest of us. Whether they're right or wrong on the particulars
isn't at issue here. What's at issue is a functioning marketplace where You
really are in charge.
What will it take to make that happen?
The answer has to come from customers, and work for both customers and
vendors. It has to work equally well for the demand and the supply sides of
market relationships.
Vendors have something meant for that today. It's called "Customer
Relationship Management", or CRM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_Relationship_Management. The
problem is, CRM doesn't relate. Instead it calls you at dinner, in hope that
you might fall for a sales pitch some minimum-wage worker reads you from a
script. CRM is what sends you junk mail. CRM is what puts you through
sign-up and sign-on wringers when all you want is to find a few facts on a
website. CRM is why so many companies are completely clueless about what
ought to be obvious about what customers actually want. Or what the market
actually needs. I submit Microsoft's "premium content protection" crap as
Exhibit A. Chances are CRM is not directly involved, but the mentality
behind it is just the same. It's fully disengaged from customers.
We can't turn CRM around, but we can give it something better than the
nearly-nothing they're relating to right now. That something is the
reciprocal of CRM, which is VRM, or Vendor Relationship Management. VRM is a
customer toolset for independence and engagement. It's what works across
vendors -- even across silos in ways that work for both customers AND
vendors.
Bottom line, it fixes broken markets by providing customers with more
freedom to engage vendors in ways that actually work.
Efforts toward VRM are taking shape at Project VRM
http://projectvrm.org/, which I've been putting together as part of my
work as a fellow with the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. (Berkman
has also incubated Creative Commons, Global Voices, podcasting and many
other worthy efforts.) I want Project VRM to pick up the gauntlet that Eric
and Rob have thrown down, and accelerate efforts toward an earlier deadline:
the end of 2007.
Here's the key: users need to be involved. Users need to give developers the
input they need to start specifying the Linux boxes that hardware vendors
will build alongside, or instead of, Vista boxes. These new boxes need to
address actual customer demand, and serve customers in ways that put both
Apple and Microsoft to shame.
I don't think it should be that hard to do. While Apple and Microsoft play
kissy with Hollywood, let's kick them both in the ass by making something
better that works for everybody. Including all the hardware vendors and all
the third parties and all the customers who stand to benefit.
Lets build a free and open marketplace for the gear we want.
And let's just start with computers. Then lets fan out to fix the rest of
consumer electronics as well. And every other networked market after that.
It's about time, no?
-- Doc Searls is Senior Editor of Linux Journal, a Visiting Scholar with
the Center for Information Technology and Society at UC Santa Barbara, and
a Fellow with the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard
University.
________________
Sources:
From the Windows Hardware Development Center:
Output Content Protection and Windows Vista:
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/stream/output_protect.mspx
From WinHEC:
Windows Longhorn Output Content Protection:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/8/f/98f3fe47-dfc3-4e74-92a3-088782200fe7/TWEN05006_WinHEC05.ppt
How to Implement Windows Vista Content Output Protection:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/b/9/5b97017b-e28a-4bae-ba48-174cf47d23cd/MED038_WH06.ppt
Protected Media Path and Driver Interoperability Requirements:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/8/f/98f3fe47-dfc3-4e74-92a3-088782200fe7/TWEN05005_WinHEC05.ppt
Peter Gutmann adds, "Note that the cryptography requirements have changed
since some of the information above was published. SHA-1 has been deprecated
in favour of SHA-256 and SHA-512, and public keys seem to be uniformly set
at 2048 bits in place of the mixture of 1024 bits and 2048 bits mentioned in
the presentations."
FEATURED EVENTS
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A new conference from the producers of LinuxWorld. OpenSolutions Summit
will feature two days of peer-to-peer case studies, technical training, and
insightful keynotes that will provide best practices and the latest
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________________________________________________________
--
Stefano Canepa aka sc: sc@linux.it http://www.stefanocanepa.it
Three great virtues of a programmer: laziness, impatience and hubris.
Le tre grandi virtù di un programmatore: pigrizia, impazienza e
arroganza. (Larry Wall)
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