Firefox gets closed-source DRM

Posted May 14, 2014 19:18 UTC (Wed) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523)
In reply to: Firefox gets closed-source DRM by riccieri
Parent article: Firefox gets closed-source DRM

>The CDM also verifies that the sandbox is one it trusts, so if you patch the sandbox, the CDM will no longer work.

Which is incompatible with the assertion that

"In our implementation, the CDM will have no access to the user’s hard drive or the network. Instead, the sandbox will provide the CDM only with communication mechanism with Firefox for receiving encrypted data and for displaying the results."

and it is disingenuous to call open-source a component that cannot be usefully modified.

Firefox gets closed-source DRM

Posted May 14, 2014 19:24 UTC (Wed) by riccieri (guest, #94794) [Link] (3 responses)

> it is disingenuous to call open-source a component that cannot be usefully modified.

It is still open source in the sense that you can audit it and verify that it does what it says it does (restricting the binary blob from doing anything nasty). With closed source software you can't do that.

Firefox gets closed-source DRM

Posted May 14, 2014 20:38 UTC (Wed) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link] (2 responses)

The Open Source Definition includes following requirement:

The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software.

The license may allow that, but the technical means would hobble that freedom. And now let's see the rationale:

Rationale: The mere ability to read source isn't enough to support independent peer review and rapid evolutionary selection. For rapid evolution to happen, people need to be able to experiment with and redistribute modifications.

That's not going to happen.

Firefox gets closed-source DRM

Posted May 14, 2014 22:28 UTC (Wed) by KaiRo (subscriber, #1987) [Link] (1 responses)

You are right in that this is walking a line. Note that any code implementing an ABI to different software, accessing pre-defined hardware or even implementing an agreed-to standard to the point is basically walking more or less the same line, as any modification might stop that other part from working, as will modifications to the sandbox that the DRM does not recognize.

Firefox gets closed-source DRM

Posted May 14, 2014 23:11 UTC (Wed) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link]

Linux kernel implements ABI to different software, accesses pre-defined hardware and even implements agreed-to standards to the point. Yet it's routinely distributed and used in modified form without losing its utility.