The creator of systemd (Lennart Poettering) has recently created a new company dedicated to bringing hardware attestation to open source software.
What might this entail? A previous blog post could provide some clues:
So, let’s see how I would build a desktop OS. The trust chain matters, from the boot loader all the way to the apps. This means all code that is run must be cryptographically validated before it is run. This is in fact where big distributions currently fail pretty badly. This is a fault of current Linux distributions though, not of SecureBoot in general.
If this technology is successful, the end result could be that we would see our Linux laptops one day being as locked down as an Iphone or Android device.
There are lots of others who are equally concerned about this possibility: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46784572
I think the possibility that this could happen is dangerously high.
Everything starts with good intentions. Everything ultimately leads to locking end users out of their personal freedoms.
No it doesn’t.
When it comes to privacy, politics, and capitalism, almost nothing starts with good intentions.
Most everything starts for the short term benefit of whoever starts it and any investors putting money into it, at the expense of everyone else and ignoring any future negative consequences unless profit can be extracted from them.
It hurting people the starter doesn’t like (even if it will come back to hurt the starter in the long time) is also a very important factor, though secondary to the short term profit one.