That turns out to be not-so-exciting, for a number of reasons:
- the Eris is already quite rootable with the locked bootloader, and it allows kernel replacement, system replacement, etc.
- the new bootloader is still S-ON, and even when it is "unlocked" it does not allow fastboot flash support to replace the recovery, boot, or misc partitions
- it is quite simple for most people with a working Eris to get the engineering S-OFF bootloader installed, which does allow fastboot flashes of the partitions I listed above
- I tried to install this new bootloader using the RUU that HTC provides and the RUU failed with an error message saying that an OTA update was required - I am already at the highest OTA and there is still no new OTA provided.
There is a possibility that this may help people with soft bricked Erises to recover more easily, but we'll have to see.
Lots of discussion about this on androidforums:
Eris gets official booloader unlock support (*yawn*) - Android Forums (with the heavy lifting being done by Erisuser1 and Scotty85.)