"Walter Bender": Re: devkeys, prettyboot, and G1G1

[Erik Garrison]

On Thu, Oct 02, 2008 at 12:07:51AM -0400, Bobby Powers wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 10:35 PM, Edward Cherlin <echerlin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I don't mind if the G1G1 donors have the option to participate in
> > testing secured laptops, but I utterly reject the notion that we can
> > jerk customer/donors around like this without their permission in
> > advance. They _will_ complain publicly.
> 
> While it is a SMALL hassle, I don't understand how it is jerking
> customers around before they've even bought a machine.  As long as the
> policy (whatever it turns out to be) is clearly stated on the
> wiki/amazon site, by purchasing a laptop they are consenting to this.
> 
> With that said, I would probably lean towards preferring unsecured
> machines (with pretty boot enabled, of course).
> 

Such small hassles, when repeated across hundreds of thousands of
people, tend to eat up a lot of time.  We should be trying to save users
this time.

I think we have sufficiently utilized G1G1 users to test our security
system.  My general perception is this test demonstrated that a
significant fraction of users want unlocked laptops so that they can do
interesting things.  Even if the average user doesn't care about what an
unlocked laptop allows them to do, what is the harm in shipping
developer keys on all the G1G1 laptops?

We'll save everyone who wants to install non-standard builds the time
required to learn about and obtain developer keys.  We'll save the
support costs required to process and answer all the queries about
developer keys.  And we'll reduce the infrastructural costs of managing
the generation of the keys.

Erik