Basically the GRUB2 have the vulnerability and is used in pretty much most - if not all - Linux distributions.
more link reports on the matter (all been posted in the past few days)
Source 1: https://www.debian.org/security/2020-GRUB-UEFI-SecureBoot/
Source 2: https://www.zdnet.com/article/boothole-attack-impacts-windows-and-linux-systems-using-grub2-and-secure-boot/
Source 3: https://www.csoonline.com/article/3568362/linux-grub2-bootloader-flaw-breaks-secure-boot-on-most-computers-and-servers.html
Source 4: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/07/new-flaw-neuters-secure-boot-but-theres-no-reason-to-panic-heres-why/
I donât think that companies will not contribute because some users make somewhat odd comments. MS is probably not doing this out of good will and somewhat participates from it.
Other companies who contribute see the same benefit.
Actually I hope more would join to even further promote Blender.
Sure I do not understand how this works and you do not understand my point. Second part of my post was a joke and that is the reason I mentioned BSOD there, you just wasted alot of your time by replying to my post. And the first part of the post was a fact, it is nobodyâs but MS fault that people perceive them that way. Plus you should not accuse other people with idiocy. When you do that you assume intellectual or moral superiority over other people that you have no idea of, given that you most likely have no background information about such people you come across over the internet.
Quoting myself, I literally said I was for it. Please do not waste more of your time on this.
On the other hand this is good for Blender as long as Ton does not let Blue Screen of Death (aka BSOD) or analytics code snippets from Microsoft sneak into Blender.
This is great news, btw mr. Vasquez told that next week someone else will probably join Blender Funding. Since the release of 2.8 I check sometimes Blender Fund and wait for the number to reach 100k - would be nice.
I caught a weird feeling while reading posts about that Microsoft is bad and didnât contribute more - any contribution is good.
Hey guys letâs be happy MS sponsors blender - we all agree MS win10 telemetry and update policy sucks - but everybody is free to also use Linux or MacOS
Well the time of hackintosh macs is more or less done
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What also needs to be mentioned is that the corporate donations comprise of at least 80 percent of the development fund. If the users can donate enough to knock that down to less than 20 percent, then you might be able to convince the BF to not have big corporations involved.
Besides that, we know that Ton is a true zealot for FOSS, and for nearly 2 decades has never allowed a corporation dictate the development path. As long as he is alive then we know the BF will not allow a plan to chip away at Blenderâs status as being âcompletely freeâ.
Nice of Microsoft to show some support for Blender!
People, I get that some of you donât like Microsoft, but you are just being unreasonable right now. Support is support and it is for the betterment of a tool we all use. Letâs try to be at least a little happy for the devs that theyâre getting the money needed to continue working, especially in these trying times.
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Legally a profit-maximizing company canât just donate to charity, so obviously microsoft execs made a case to their board who expects to get a direct profit out of supporting blender which is why there is a reason to be cautious, itâs not about being ânice.â If the executives wanted to be nice, they would donate their personal money, not the companyâs money, but they are trying to ensure they pay themselves first, so again, a reason to be cautious.
Most likely they benefit from data analytics, exposure, free python and other script assets, multimedia assets, machine learning assets, probably more in a calculated move.
Thatâs weird, because in 2018 Microsoft is listed at position number 10 in a top ten of companies that gave most to charities in the USA.
" In 2017, Microsoft Corporation gave $169 million cash to charity â or 0.7% of its $23.1 billion pretax profit, according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy.
Via its Microsoft Philanthropies arm, the tech giant works with more than 200,000 nonprofits and has donated more than $1.4 billion in cash grants and technology (as of February 2018), according to a LinkedIn article by Mary Snapp, corporate vice president and lead for Microsoft Philanthropies."
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Read the rest. They have to argue their company makes a profit from it, otherwise it should come from their personal finance. Do you honestly have no comprehension of the issues of big philanthropy?
They have to be able to argue they derive a benefit from any âcharitableâ act, otherwise any shareholder can sue them for wasting corporate funds. Since theyâre a publicly traded company, thereâs a lot of potential lawsuits. Obviously they arenât going to tank their company over such a frivolous mistake, which means they have an iron-clad list of ways they benefit from donating to blender. Itâs not guaranteed to be a bad thing, but itâs a reason to be cautious, to think about their motives, to think about what conflicts might arise in the future.
Philanthropy is defined as âthe desire to promote the welfare of others, expressed especially by the generous donation of money to good causes.â
Iâm not sure sticking the word âbigâ on the front alters anything. Thatâs already implied by the word âgenerousâ in the dictionary definition.
Which law (in which country) would prevent a company donating to charity without expecting a profit? Sure, their shareholders could stop them. But they donât and they havenât.
In this instance itâs my understanding that they have been using Blender and have decided to help, in a small way, to put in to its development costs. Nothing more, other than a public show of support.
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Businesses sponsor stuff all the time. Sometimes itâs just for the publicity, sometimes itâs for a tax write-off. Whatever the reason, I canât think of any instance where a corporation sponsored something to somehow damage it.
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Donât mean to get in the way of conversation, but⌠I donât quite understand whatâs being âniceâ has to do with anything? People cannot just go giving away money to noble causes without a care, whether they are big companies or random lone devs living in the basement. Any decision involving money has to be made with quite a bit of thought put into it.
Isnât that what ALL the companies donating to BF do anyway? âSupporting the ecosystemâ so that all could benefit. Them included, obviously?
MS did a good thing, when they couldâve just go about their business. Itâs not like it would hurt their reputation or anything. Whether that decision comes from some evil master plan to take over the world, random act of charity or genuine desire to spread goodwill is beside the point, itâs an ungrateful response and a disgraceful speculation. Shouldnât community members be a little above that?
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âBigâ is an exceptionally common term that refers to a massive industrial scale, typically noted in philanthropy due to the conflict of interest from charitable tax deductions. Since Microsoft is a U.S. based company, you can find itemization forms from the U.S.â IRS website. Any charity or corporation can ignore bylaws, and as long as no one notices, theyâll get away with it.
Boards are restricted by acting under U.S. fiduciary duties. The specifics of these duties are dependent on the statutory law under which the corporation is filed, and Iâm not going to cover 50 states of statutory laws, you can google that yourself.
In a certain sense youâre semi-correct to wonder that they have to maximize the companyâs profit directly, but they still are required to act in shareholdersâ best interest. This means if they can reduce the tax burden of their shareholders, such as by say, donating to charity, then they can choose to do so. If they want to accrue assets using the equivalent of underpaid labor provided by numerous blender artists and developers rather than paying directly for services from other companies or paying employees a livable wage, they are also free to do so.
I donât either, but other (non-me) people said Microsoft was ânice.â
Yes and no. The natural competitive mechanism is in some sense the goal that regulations are designed to preserve, but individual companies are not donating with this in mind, they serve themselves. If they didnât, then it would contradict the premise of the market for which their competition was designed to serve.
Iâm going to bow out of this one. Itâs going nowhere good.
Iâm afraid I lump people who have an irrational hatred of Microsoft (and Bill Gates of course) into the same category as: Anti-vaxxers, anti-maskers, 5G nutjobs, people who call Covid 19 the âChina Virusâ, people who use the term âplandemicâ, people who believe in Reptilian overlords, QAnon cretins and flat Earthers to name but a few. A Venn diagram covering all those would contain a lot of overlaps.
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That sounds like more of a âyouâ problem. I donât see anyone here saying they âhateâ Microsoft, and I even said explicitly itâs not guaranteed to be a bad thing.
The âdamageâ is often calculated in externalities. Suppose a company lobbies a regulator to cut emission standards. Well, the shareholders make more money. Whatâs the damage? Itâs not the profit, itâs the increased air particles that increase the liklihood of lung cancer and other ailments associated with toxicity, leading to increased medical costs, decreased labor and many other externalities.
Similarly, blender expanding too quickly could have a similar effect on the 3D community. If only a few people control the majority of blenderâs production, such as by BF acquiring the majority of the market share of all assets and donations, then individual artists have less of an impact. In this sense, Microsoft can continue to donate âon their own termsâ once BF has grown large enough to be dependent on large corporate donations since it will then be the only way their labor force can sustain themselves. Naturally, people who work at BF will not be eager to stop making money for all the work they put in, so over the course of the next decade this potentially could be a problem since the majority of blenderâs new development would be controlled by Microsoft.
Unfortunately, this kind of rabid âcorporations are evil by defaultâ mentality is common in FOSS communities. I even once replied to someone here who was offended at the very concept of buying and selling things (because it causes income inequality or something like that).
I wonder if some people here think the average corporate CEO is some scheming cat person sitting in a dark room while twirling his mustache. Surely we must assume all corporations are only capable of malice and only want to rob you blind, because blanket statements are good.
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HEY! Whatâs wrong with cat people? Some of my best friends are cats. I have a 19 year old deaf one and a 6 year old one that likes to attack the elderly one randomly and chase her around.
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What are you even talking about? There wasnât some shareholder meeting over this. Itâs $30k a yearâless than they pay a single employee. Theyâll get a minor tax write-off on it, and thatâs all. If they were wanting to do something nefarious theyâd be going about it a completely different way.
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Ah, but thatâs the beauty of evil plots, every conspiracy theorist knows that! You start with taking care of poor little orphan kittens and only THEN commence the nuclear bombardment run.
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