State of DRM: Crackers 2^32, Music Industry 0

The State of the DRM war.

Every major DRM technology has been broken, and subsequently broken again after being fixed. DRM as a technology solution to an economic and IP protection problem is not working. Here's an interesting idea - why not charge what people are prepared to pay, then there's no piracy to chase, legal music downloads increase, and profits go up. Novel, eh?

| 02 Aug 2007 | #

GPLv3 Released

Important cross-roads day in the world of free and open-source software - the predominant licence is up-issued to a new version - GPLv3 is released.

Will existing projects migrate? Importantly what will the Linux kernel guys do? What about other important projects like Samba? Will it become the licence of choice for new projects? Is this the deal-breaker for the future of the Microsoft-Novell deal (and all others like it)? What will be the response of distributions - Ubuntu, Debian, Red Hat, SuSE, etc? Will this see TiVo-like devices move away from using Linux and start using a BSD instead? Will this alienate the FSF from "mainstream" open-source, or will this unify free and open-source developers together? Will it be a non-issue altogether?

It will be very interesting, won't it? :-)

Update: Luis Villa provides good commentary about the licence itself, info for developers and for companies and finishes with some good closing thoughts.

| 30 Jun 2007 | #

DRM-free iTunes

Wow. According to AppleInsider, Apple and EMI have announced that DRM is a failed business model. (Press Releases). DRM free songs for USD 0.30 more. The only sticking point is that it's in AAC format - which AFAIK only Apple devices support. Nonethless, Wow.

| 02 Apr 2007 | #

The Top 10 Arguments Against DRM

The Top 10 Arguments Against DRM

Thanks Digg...

| 20 Nov 2006 | #

Motorola to release JME stack under Apache Licencing

Motorola plans to release a Java Micro Edition under Apache License V2.0.

Wow. It's nice to see this happen. I worked on a J(2)ME stack and a Javacard stack eons ago - I wonder if any of my code survived :-)

| 03 Nov 2006 | #