| Whoever said anything about a key? The question here is what happens if a PC
hardware distributor distributes Ubuntu 1m.no on a Restricted Boot -- as opposed
to Secure Boot -- system. It is extremely hypothetical, since "Windows 8
Certified" explicitly requires Secure Boot, not Restricted Boot. GPLv3 Grub2 can
work with the former, but not the latter.
It would be violation of Grub2
copyright to distribute it on a Restricted Boot system. One has no license to do
that. So doing would be the distributor's problem, between them and the Grub2
copyright holder (FSF). Canonical need not be involved, save to make explicitly
clear that this is the case. If it were to happen, FSF would no doubt offer
their usual choice of remedies: either (1) fix the bug and show existing
customers how to work around it e.g. reflash UEFI bios with either an
operational Secure Boot or Clear Boot, or (2) refund the rube's money, retrieve
their dodgy boat anchors, and pay whatever penalty the class action settles
on.
With GPLv3/Grub2 it really is a hypothetical situation, almost certainly
caused by a firmware bug that resulted in Secure Boot inadvertently becoming
Restricted Boot. Fine. Bugs happen. Not a big deal. Fix it.
Unless of
course the distributor deliberately installed Ubuntu on a purpose-built
Restricted Boot system. But the only legitimate reason for so doing would be
(alleged) uber-security, in which case the distributor would probably choose a
very stripped-down Linux distro with robust selinux (I don't use Ubuntu
and don't know if it qualifies), and a custom boot loader all set up so that
only a specific version of that specific distro would boot.
AFAIK that too
would be perfectly legal. FSF would just prefer Canonical not go so far out of
their way to make it trivial as well.
Ed L -- IANAL --
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