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Lennart Poettering, Christian Brauner founded a new company

amutable.com

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Re: Lennart Poettering, Christian Brauner founded a new company

#21

Post by stackghost »

Hi Chris,

One of the most grating pain points of the early versions of systemd was a general lack of humility, some would say rank arrogance, displayed by the project lead and his orbiters. Today systemd is in a state of "not great, not terrible" but it was (and in some circles still is) notorious for breaking peoples' linux installs, their workflows, and generally just causing a lot of headaches. The systemd project leads responded mostly with Apple-style "you're holding it wrong" sneers.

It's not immediately clear to me what exactly Amutable will be implementing, but it smells a lot like some sort of DRM, and my immediate reaction is that this is something that Big Tech wants but that users don't.

My question is this: Has Lennart's attitude changed, or can linux users expect more of the same paternalism as some new technology is pushed on us whether we like it or not?

Re: Lennart Poettering, Christian Brauner founded a new company

#22

Post by bayindirh »

direwolf20 wrote: post #11
bayindirh wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably built on systemd's Secure Boot + immutability support. As said above, it's about who controls the keys. It's either building your own castle or having to live with the Ultimate TiVo. We'll see.

We all know who controls the keys. It's the first party who puts their hands on the device.

Doesn't have to be. While I'm not a fan of systemd (my comment history is there), I want to start from a neutral PoV, and see what it does.

I have my reservations, ideas, and what it's supposed to do, but this is not a place to make speculations and to break spirits.

I'll put my criticism out politely when it's time.

Re: Lennart Poettering, Christian Brauner founded a new company

#23

Post by blixtra »

redleader55 wrote: post #6

Can you share more details at this point about what you are trying to tackle as a first step?

As per the announcement, we’ll be building this over the next months and sharing more information as this rolls out. Much of the fundamentals can be extracted from Lennart’s posts and the talks from All Systems Go! over the last years.

Re: Lennart Poettering, Christian Brauner founded a new company

#27

Post by direwolf20 »

jsheard wrote: post #18
advisedwang wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The events includes a conference title "Remote Attestation of Imutable Operating Systems built on systemd", which is a bit of a clue.

I'm sure this company is more focused on the enterprise angle, but I wonder if the buildout of support for remote attestation could eventually resolve the Linux gaming vs. anti-cheat stalemate. At least for those willing to use a "blessed" kernel provided by Valve or whoever.

Only by creating a new stalemate between essential liberty and a little temporary security — anticheat doesn't protect you from DMA cheating.

Re: Lennart Poettering, Christian Brauner founded a new company

#28

Post by josephcsible »

youarentrightjr wrote: post #10
mikkupikku wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like kernel mode DRM or some similarly unwanted bullshit.

> Sounds like kernel mode DRM or some similarly unwanted bullshit. Look, I hate systemd just as much as the next guy - but how are you getting "DRM" out of this?

"cryptographically verifiable integrity" is a euphemism for tivoization/Treacherous Computing. See, e.g., https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/can-you-trust.en.html

Re: Lennart Poettering, Christian Brauner founded a new company

#29

Post by bayindirh »

zb3 wrote: post #17
bayindirh wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably built on systemd's Secure Boot + immutability support. As said above, it's about who controls the keys. It's either building your own castle or having to live with the Ultimate TiVo. We'll see.

Just to make it clear - on Android you don't have the keys. Even with avb_custom_key you can't modify many partitions.

None of the consumer mobile devices give you all the keys. There are many reasons for that, but 99.9% of them are monetary reasons.

Re: Lennart Poettering, Christian Brauner founded a new company

#30

Post by bri3d »

youarentrightjr wrote: post #10
mikkupikku wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like kernel mode DRM or some similarly unwanted bullshit.

> Sounds like kernel mode DRM or some similarly unwanted bullshit. Look, I hate systemd just as much as the next guy - but how are you getting "DRM" out of this?

Hacker News has recently been dominated by conspiracy theorists who believe that all applications of cryptography are evil attempts by shadowy corporate overlords to dominate their use of computing.
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