Companies that are using GNU/Linux to make themselves profitable could have easily called this bluff.
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Linux has no need of secure boot. But nobody working in the field has the balls to say it. Windows does - it is the cesspit where every virus, worm, and rootkit lives and thrives. Iran would have had no reason to worry about its nuclear secrets being stolen if it was using UNIX-based systems.
But these companies, who collectively have much more muscle than Microsoft in the computer industry, just couldn't be bothered. That left the door open for Red Hat to indulge in grandstanding.
One of the great Peanuts cartoon by the late Charles M. Schulz tells us all about Microsoft in a couple of pages. It is the US football season, and along comes Lucy, with a pigskin in her hand, asking Charlie Brown to kick it while she holds it for him. Charlie Brown refuses, reminding her that she has done this many times in the past, only to pull it away at the last minute, resulting in him falling flat on his back.
But Lucy, remember gentle reader, is the persistent sort. And so, finally, Charlie Brown gives in, and comes charging up - only to fall flat on his back as she yanks the ball away at the last second. And she walks away, muttering something about his undying faith in human nature being an inspiration to all and sundry.
What better illustration of the way Microsoft does things? It is repeatedly able to persuade seemingly sane companies to join hands with it - and then yanks the equivalent of the ball away at the last minute. This has happened right from the days when it short-changed Gary Kildall before MS-DOS even existed. And it has gone on right through its existence. Embrace, extend and extinguish is what has made Microsoft. It knows no other methods.
Red Hat will find out over the next few years that the leopard never changes its spots.
