From the article mentioned in the original post:

Microsoft's practice is facilitated by the UEFI, or Unified Extensible 
Firmware Interface, which allows a manufacturer to lock down the boot 
process so that it will only work on their specified conditions.

What's to keep Microsoft from telling a manufacturer they must lock down 
the machine so no other operating system will boot on it if they want 
licenses to install windows on their machines?

On 6/9/2012 17:14, Eric Shubert wrote:
> I don't see how that would be a problem. Please reference exact part 
> of the article which leads you to believe that.
>
> BL, there's a lot of misinformation about this. I don't think it's 
> anything to be concerned about.
>