Re: Encrypted Media proposal: Summary of the discussion so far

On Fri, 16 Mar 2012 00:25:45 -0000, Glenn Adams <glenn@skynav.com> wrote:

>> > We should indeed try to maximize the set of services
>> > supported by pure FOSS stacks - to make that choice
>> > as painless as possible. But that is different from saying
>> > that services which use non-FOSS technologies should
>> > not be on the web.
>>
>> The issue here are not proprietary technologies in general but closed,
>> executable and unspecified code which is to be run on client computers.
>
> Since that is the type of executable being used 99.94% of the time by
> 99.94% of users, it doesn't seem like a problem. The most used browser
> today (IE) [1] is made from closed, non-public code.

And avoiding situation where websites require this specific binary is  
exactly what W3C is trying to do.

As long as IE implements W3C's recommendations, and pages are not written  
to depend on IE's non-standard behaviors, the closed browser can be  
successfully substituted with a FOSS one.

AFAIK there are no plans to make closed CDMs documented well enough to be  
completely substitutable with FOSS equivalents (since this would obviously  
destroy strength of the DRM), so closed CMDs required by websites will  
create a very different situation, which is much worse for  
interoperability than a closed browser.

-- 
regards, Kornel Lesiński

Received on Friday, 16 March 2012 10:09:11 UTC