system autodeath

James Hubbard jameshubbard at gmail.com
Wed Aug 20 21:42:22 UTC 2008


On Wed, Aug 20, 2008 at 2:57 PM, seth vidal <skvidal at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> A friend forwarded me this blog:
> http://www.gdt.id.au/~gdt/blog/linux/autodeath.1024px
>
> and I wondered if it would be something to consider for fedora releases.
>
> This would NOT be as a default, but as a package you can install, if you
> wish, to drop the route on your box after whatever expiration date. We
> can set the release date in a file in the package and key from there.
>
>
> If the package was included in a fedora repo we could have it have a
> death date of whenever the release started + 14months (some wiggle room
> for release slips) for example.
>
> Any thoughts?

Sounds a lot like Windows Genuine Advantage where you can't use your
machine anymore if you can't validate your installation.  Someone
(probably many someones) will install this by mistake and there will
be a lot of screaming that not even Microsoft will disable your OS if
it is running past the EOL/support period.

It would probably be better that during the last batch of updates a
small program gets installed that will notify users when they login
that the system is no longer supported.  This could be in a terminal,
a "balloon" in X, or a message on the X login screen.

Whatever is implemented, should be given a lot of thought and it
should disable the system in any manner.  It could alienate a lot of
users. I haven't upgraded my work machine from F7 to F9 yet because
I've not yet had time to test gcc 4.3 with some commercial libraries
that have only been compiled against gcc 4.1.x.  I know lots of other
desktop/server users that are running system from FC2 - FC6. (Yes I
know about RHEL.)

(As a side note: My wife hates the security balloons that pop up when
there's a security related update.  She's always comparing it to
windows. )

My $0.02.

--
James Hubbard




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