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Nokia Urges Linux Developers To Be Cool With DRM

Posted by kdawson on Fri Jun 13, 2008 07:52 AM
from the unclear-on-the-concept dept.
Software Linux
superglaze writes in to note that according to Nokia's software chief, its plans for open source include getting developers to accept things like DRM, commercial IP rights, and SIM locks. "Jaaksi admitted that concepts like these 'go against the open-source philosophy,' but said they were necessary components of the current mobile industry. 'Why do we need closed vehicles? We do,' he said. 'Some of these things harm the industry but they're here [as things stand]. These are touchy, emotional issues, but this dialogue is very much needed. As an industry, we plan to use open-source technologies, but we are not yet ready to play by the rules; but this needs to work the other way round too.'"
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Submission: Nokia urges Linux developers to be cool with DRM by superglaze (1112971)
[+] How Nokia and Linux Can Live Together 155 comments
Bruce Perens writes "Ari Jaaski of Nokia is concerned that the Linux developers need to learn to live with DRM, SIM-locking, and 'IPR'. But they won't. Fortunately, Nokia can do all that it wants with Linux, while being GPL2 and even GPL3-compatible. The key is knowing how to draw bright lines between different parts of the system. That's a legal term, and in this case it means a line between the Free Software and the rest of the system, that is 'bright' in that the two pieces are very well separated, and there is no dispute that one could be a derivative work of the other, or infringes on the other in any way. All of the Free Software goes on one side of that line, and all of the lock-down stuff on the other side." A very interesting read, and a good how-to for any company that is looking to use GPLed code as part of their products, or even just make their products to be hacker-friendly.
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  • Say what?!? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nahdude812 (88157) * on Friday June 13 2008, @07:53AM (#23776733) Homepage

    but we are not yet ready to play by the rules; but this needs to work the other way round too
    So you're not yet ready to play by our rules, but you want us to play by your rules so that you have an opportunity to take advantage of the work we produce and provide to you for free (beer/speech); when the only stipulation we have is that you provide it back for free?

    I'm sorry, it sounds like you have your head firmly rooted somewhere dark and unnatural.

    "These things suck and hurt both you and us, and we won't bend on that. But we want you to work for us for free anyway."

    Holy cow man, listen to yourself. This is our playground and we give you an opportunity to play in it for free; in return we purchase the goods you produce as a result. You play by our rules or we take our playground and our purchasing power to someone who will.

    • Re:Say what?!? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by WiglyWorm (1139035) on Friday June 13 2008, @07:56AM (#23776773)
      I wish my moderator points didn't just expire. Hit the nail on the head.

    • Re:Say what?!? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by qortra (591818) on Friday June 13 2008, @08:01AM (#23776837) Homepage
      Interesting. I read it as more of a ransom note:

      "We have QT, and unless you give us DRM software in 6 months, you can kiss future GPL releases goodbye!"

      • Re:Say what?!? (Score:5, Informative)

        by kipman725 (1248126) on Friday June 13 2008, @08:03AM (#23776883)
        well thats the wonder of the GPL, we can just take the most current version of QT and FORK.

        • Re:Say what?!? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by qortra (591818) on Friday June 13 2008, @08:20AM (#23777077) Homepage
          Absolutely, and given the choice, I would choose a forked community QT over compromising our values concerning DRM. However, it would be unfortunate to lose the support of a larger organization dedicated exclusively to improving QT. Do you remember the recent article on the the stalled XOrg development? People don't like doing low level, thankless, GUI stuff. They like making interfaces, not improving the speed of existing widgets. It would be difficult to get a sufficient number of people to work on the project reliably, IMHO.

          • Re:Say what?!? (Score:5, Insightful)

            by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF (813746) on Friday June 13 2008, @08:38AM (#23777313)

            Do you remember the recent article on the the stalled XOrg development? People don't like doing low level, thankless, GUI stuff. They like making interfaces, not improving the speed of existing widgets.

            Actually, I think most Linux developers don't really enjoy the bit they are working on. They do it because they are being paid by a company who needs that part improved. With X.org, for the most part, it was not a problem for what companies want to use it for (mostly as a server). As companies start to use Linux for more applications (to sell consumer laptops, for example) they will invest more in areas like improving X.org in ways that will facilitate those uses.

            It would be difficult to get a sufficient number of people to work on the project reliably, IMHO.

            Nokia could get out of developing QT, but someone else would move into the niche and undercut the prices of their proprietary replacement. It is simply too hot of a business opportunity to be ignored right now. Maybe the companies dumping money into QT development would go down for a while without Nokia's support, or maybe they would go up because people see an opportunity to make money. Either way, Nokia trying to use it as leverage is not going to get them too far.

          • Re:Say what?!? (Score:5, Insightful)

            by sgt scrub (869860) <saintium@yaho o . c om> on Friday June 13 2008, @08:45AM (#23777389) Homepage
            It would be difficult to get a sufficient number of people to work on the project reliably
            See. That is the reason for my comment on the Xorg article to the fact of "if someone insists on something being in your code tell them to pay you or f'off". Projects shouldn't be a matter of "getting enough people together to produce something". FOSS projects should be love'm or leave'm.

            QT isn't exactly the only game in town for foss_gui. If QT fell off the map the underlying technology that lets QT draw the pretty pictures will continue to work fine.

            I'm right there with you as far as principles go. Which brings it back to "pay or f'off". If someone wants something from you that is in addition to what you were planning or had time to do they should pay you. If these guys want QT to have BSware in it then they should pay someone to write it then ask for hooks to implement it within QT. If they kill QT over it then it is the original developers that get screwed. And trust me, if you screw the original developers on a project you will already have your "enough people" to fork the project.

      • Re:Say what?!? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by mdmkolbe (944892) on Friday June 13 2008, @08:07AM (#23776931)
        If that is their plan, they must not realize the low value of QT (we have plenty of alternatives) compared to the high value of the no-DRM ideals in the F/OSS community. They really aren't in a bargaining position.

      • Re:Say what?!? (Score:5, Informative)

        by Constantine XVI (880691) <trash.eighty+sla ... m minus caffeine> on Friday June 13 2008, @08:14AM (#23777017)
        They're still held by the Free Qt deal. If they stop releasing OSS versions of Qt, it's forcefully taken from them.

      • Re:Say what?!? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by clang_jangle (975789) on Friday June 13 2008, @08:53AM (#23777465)
        I read it as a ransom note too, but I don't think the hostage is qt -- it's freedom to run our code on a phone, period. It isn't too hard to envision a time when hacking a device connected to a proprietary network becomes a criminal offense.

        • Don't contribute to projects that claim ownership of your code as a condition of contributing.
          I guess that precludes contributing to most GNU projects, as they want you to assign copyright to the FSF. OTOH, I tend to trust that the FSF believes in continuing the cause of free softwware and I doubt they'll be making anybody's code proprietary anytime soon.

        • Re:Say what?!? (Score:5, Informative)

          by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF (813746) on Friday June 13 2008, @09:07AM (#23777611)

          This is the lesson here. Don't contribute to projects that claim ownership of your code as a condition of contributing. Fork the project first... QT used this model. Then they sold all the code they collected over the years to Nokia. And here we are.

          Except people did consider this possibility and Trolltech signed an agreement specifically covering what would happen if they stopped releasing improvements to QT, specifically including cases where they had been acquired by another company. Basically they're bound to release it under the BSD license at that point, so we have a start for a fork just as good as what you mention.

          • Re:Say what?!? (Score:5, Insightful)

            by MBGMorden (803437) on Friday June 13 2008, @09:01AM (#23777539)

            MySQL, QT and DivX networks are *NO* better than Nokia. I don't care if MySQL never went commercial, it was much better as LGPL. Now everybody else is considering going to PostgreSQL.
            That might be better in the long run. PostgreSQL in most people's opinions is a far better database for just about anything. As a former MySQL user, I've been attempting to switch over all my existing stuff from MySQL to PostegreSQL if the app supports it. So far, everything has been working nicely (MySQL on the other hand, has corrupted at least 1 database beyond repair for me before).

            Divx networks? We made Xvid.

            If QT goes that route then we do have wxWidgets as you mentioned (which is a toolkit that I REALLY like - you mentioned Linux and Windows but the code also ports over to MacOS as well), or the obvious choice of GTK.

            We will suh-vive.

    • Re:Say what?!? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by paroneayea (642895) on Friday June 13 2008, @08:02AM (#23776853) Homepage

      Hopefully at some point soon OpenMoko [openmoko.com] will become good enough for normal phone usage. Now there's a company that, from the very beginning, has wanted to play by our rules.

      Want to get the linux community's support? Asus did it, even though I'm not entirely sure they realized it when they began doing so. By releasing a machine that's linux friendly and not locked down, you're sure to get a community surrounding you that will help even improve the usefulness of your product.

    • Re:Say what?!? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by erudified (958273) on Friday June 13 2008, @08:31AM (#23777223) Homepage

      "Jaaksi admitted that concepts like these 'go against the open-source philosophy,' but said they were necessary components of the current mobile industry. 'Why do we need closed vehicles? We do,'

      I read this, and interpret it as this:

      "Jaaksi admitted that going 140mph in a 55mph zone 'goes against the public safety philosophy,' but said it was a necessary component of his fast-paced business lifestyle. 'Why do I need to do 140mph? I do,'

      I love this guy.

  • Here's an idea? Want DRM in your product? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by base3 (539820) on Friday June 13 2008, @07:54AM (#23776741)
    Write your own damn code!
    • Well, I suppose someone could write an open source DRM module for mplayer. Would that work for you?
      • Funny, but why not? Optionally installed of course.... Trying to mandatorily include DRM in all opensource media players would be a very strange and ludicrous idea. But if someone wants to hang themselves, give them some more rope and fetch the popcorn.

      • Re:Here's an idea? Want DRM in your product? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by gnasher719 (869701) on Friday June 13 2008, @08:23AM (#23777113)

        Well, I suppose someone could write an open source DRM module for mplayer. Would that work for you?
        First, this could be done even using GPL v. 3 (the GPL would require that the DRM module can be modified by users and that a modified module can be installed; the GPL doesn't care what the module actually does). And it would most likely be the most unbreakable DRM in existence: If you write a DRM module that cannot be circumvented even with the possibility of modifying the code and installing a modified module, then what on earth is a hacker to do to get around this?

        • Re:Here's an idea? Want DRM in your product? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by nahdude812 (88157) * on Friday June 13 2008, @08:35AM (#23777263) Homepage
          DRM is 100% Security Through Obscurity. They give you everything you need to produce an unencrypted version of something, and hope to high heaven that the only time it ever exists in unencrypted form is some place you don't think to look for it.

          An open source DRM module couldn't possibly work. Well, it could, but it would be very easily crackable - instead of sending the unencrypted stream to the screen and speakers, send it instead to ff4mpeg or to a disk and have it re-encoded.

          Every major DRM scheme has been broken to date, and that's without having the source code available. Having the source means you just redirect the output to some place you can capture it, and you're done.

      • Re:Here's an idea? Want DRM in your product? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by dk.r*nger (460754) on Friday June 13 2008, @08:37AM (#23777289)

        Well, I suppose someone could write an open source DRM module for mplayer. Would that work for you?

        Yeah, but no:
        mplayer -vo mpegpes:grab.mpg YourDRMfile.wmv

        So, your DRM decoding module should set a flag in mplayer that forbids file-output. So I modify mpegpes module to ignore that flag, or for mplayer to lie to the DRM module about which output module is loaded. Hmm, so you require the mplayer binary to be signed by someone you trust, probably Microsoft or RedHat, and they'll charge $6000 pr release, even if it's a trivial but critical bugfix.
        OK, I don't wanna do that, so I plug in a kernel-module that will always open /usr/bin/mplayer_signed instead of /usr/bin/mplayer when the DRM module asks, so it will appear signed. So you now require the kernel to be signed. So I run the kernel in a VM, and screen-scrape from the VM-host -- so you require direct access to a cryptographic chip on the motherboard to make sure that I don't run you video in a VM.
        Then I get myself one of these videocards with a FPGA on it, and program that to dump the video-stream back into the memory, so I can copy it to disk - so you want your cryptographic chain of trust to include the videocard, and I put my FPGA in the other end of the DVI cable, and rip from there. So you demand access to a chip in the monitor, also.
        So, no, you can't put a DRM module (that's worth anything, at least) in anything opensource, without making the entire system wall-to-wall closed (AND broken, too). Microsoft, whose customers couldn't care less about closed, tries to do this, and fails. ("What, I can't put my legitimately purchased Plays for Sure! file on my fucking iPod?")

  • Translation (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dreamchaser (49529) on Friday June 13 2008, @07:55AM (#23776747) Homepage Journal
    "We want to ditch your rules but have you live by our rules. We know it's wrong and bad for consumers but too bad. We want to lock in our profits".

    Pretty typical attitude in the industry I'd say.
  • I think they are the ones that need to be "educated".

    • Re:They need us more than we need them (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Opportunist (166417) on Friday June 13 2008, @08:01AM (#23776843)
      Educated? I'd say LARTed.

      Can you imagine what a cell could become if it is "OSS friendly"? Yes, you will most likely not lock your customers into having to use it, but here's a really novel, radical and completely unthinkable idea: They just might want to use your product because it caters to their needs.

      I know it is so last century, but how about making a product again that the customer wants to buy instead of trying to force him to buy it with vendor lock-in snares?

  • Emotional? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Opportunist (166417) on Friday June 13 2008, @07:56AM (#23776771)
    Huh? A corporation talking about emotion?

    It's about money. It's about vendor lock-in, it's about customer control and about avoiding competition.

    They want cheap/free (the beer kind) software, but under their sole control, without allowing the user of the software to apply it to their needs. Sorry, OSS doesn't swing that way.

    • Re:Emotional? (Score:5, Funny)

      by bug1 (96678) <glenn,l,mcgrath&gmail,com> on Friday June 13 2008, @08:16AM (#23777043)
      Huh? A corporation talking about emotion?

      It's about money...


      You dont think corporates get emotional about money ?

      • Re:Emotional? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Opportunist (166417) on Friday June 13 2008, @08:12AM (#23776999)
        The problem they are facing is that DRM and OSS don't mix easily. If at all. How do you want to enforce any kind of DRM when you open your source code?

        My guess is that he fell for the fallacy of considering the "free" in OSS as "doesn't cost anything". OSS can actually cost something. Nowhere does it say you can't ask for money to write it. The "free" part means that it is released openly. And that's something he appearantly simply doesn't get.

  • In other news... (Score:5, Funny)

    by mr_da3m0n (887821) on Friday June 13 2008, @07:57AM (#23776791) Homepage
    In other news, a dictator urged the population to be cool with a totalitarian state.

  • SIM locks?! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jez9999 (618189) on Friday June 13 2008, @07:57AM (#23776797) Homepage Journal
    Are you shitting me? IP rights are one thing (we don't expect people not to respect IP rights, we may disagree a bit on how extensive those rights should be), but SIM locks are an anticompetitive abomination, and this guy is a moron if he expects intelligent developers ever to like them. They're all about vendor lock-in, and removal of consumer choice. I bought my phone independently of a contract. It cost more but means I just put in whatever company's SIM I want and I switch providers that easily. Nokia, if you don't like that, fuck off. (It's a Nokia phone)

    • Re:SIM locks?! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MoonBuggy (611105) on Friday June 13 2008, @08:09AM (#23776959) Homepage
      I'm particularly surprised to hear this from Nokia, actually. It's been a few years since I was working with mobile phones, so maybe they've changed since then, but their SIM locks seemed like pretty much token efforts to appease the networks. Back then, at least, a lot of Motorola and Sony Ericsson phones were only unlockable with a full flash of the phone's OS while Nokias just needed a code that could be easily calculated from the phone's serial number. I always got the impression that Nokia wanted their phones to be unlocked - they don't make any money from the network contract anyway, so it was in their interests to have the handset itself as useful as possible to the customer.

  • 'Why do we need closed vehicles? We do,'


    I'm sure that will do wonders to convince all of the second-grade OSS programmers to help you out.

    Me, I'm not interested. Because you're a doody-head, because you are.

  • RE (Score:5, Funny)

    by Kroc (925275) on Friday June 13 2008, @08:00AM (#23776823)
    Asking Linux users to accept DRM is like asking them if it's alright to take a shit in their kitchen.

    There is *no* cool way you can word it.

  • I'm cool with DRM (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Skapare (16644) on Friday June 13 2008, @08:00AM (#23776827) Homepage

    ... as long as it doesn't interfere with my rights to reprogram anything using any free/libre software and doesn't intefere with my fair use rights to use the content I pay for.

  • Have cake, eat it too. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by seanellis (302682) on Friday June 13 2008, @08:00AM (#23776831) Homepage Journal
    "As an industry, we plan to use open-source technologies, but we are not yet ready to play by the rules."

    Sounds like they are not yet in a position to use open-source technologies.

    It would be interesting to see if turnabout is fair play. I'd love to have a free high-end smartphone, but that means taking up an expensive monthly airtime contract. Instead, I'll just declare that I am "not yet ready to play by the rules", take the benefit of the free handset now, and later on I'll sign up for a contract when I am ready to play by the rules.

    OK?

  • Two simple principles: (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Rinisari (521266) on Friday June 13 2008, @08:02AM (#23776859) Homepage Journal
    If I don't control it, I don't own it.
    If I don't own it, I can't trust it.

  • even open source cant make DRM work (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RiotingPacifist (1228016) on Friday June 13 2008, @08:03AM (#23776865)
    1) encrypt something
    2) send encrypted data to their computer
    3) send key to their computer
    4) wait for somebody to take a memory dump
    5) NO profit

    Even if somebody was to make a binary blob to prevent memory dumps at kernel level, all you need is to run linux in a virtual machine (i hear its good at that) or use some rootkit.

  • OK sure, we are 100% behind DRM. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Lumpy (12016) on Friday June 13 2008, @08:11AM (#23776987) Homepage
    Nokia, we just dropped in a new kernel module that makes DRM and SIM locking 100% transparent. you do not have to do anything it uses a 1024bit RSA encryption and has bypass detection as well as a system to fight off anyone trying to break DRM. you don't have to do anything it's all in there for you. It's even TRANSPARENT to you and the users.

    Dont worry nokia, we got your back, it's there believe us. and it's Un-Crackable. We wouldn't lie to you.

  • I'm okay with DRM provisions in open-source (Score:5, Funny)

    by oldspewey (1303305) on Friday June 13 2008, @08:13AM (#23777009)
    Go ahead Nokia and write the code that forces open-source software to respect DRM and content locks ... just make sure your code is well-commented. Thanks!

  • Blah blah blah rahhh rahh (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Idaho (12907) on Friday June 13 2008, @08:20AM (#23777079)
    "These are touchy, emotional issues"

    No, they are not. There are very rational and well-explained reasons for being against DRM, closed platforms, vendor lock-in and the like.

    I'm not even going to repeat them here, because I assume them to be well-known (certainly to the Slashdot audience).

    So that's some nice bullshitting and spin doctoring going on there, but no. Really, no.

  • Jaaksi's blog (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 13 2008, @08:23AM (#23777125)
    Ari Jaaksi blogs at jaaksi.blogspot.com, if you want to directly talk to him.

  • Oh Dear: Nokia Does *Not* Get It (Score:5, Insightful)

    by segedunum (883035) on Friday June 13 2008, @09:00AM (#23777535) Homepage

    "We want to educate open-source developers. There are certain business rules [developers] need to obey, such as DRM, IPR [intellectual property rights], SIM locks and subsidised business models."
    Educate them of what? Lock-ins are totally and fundamentally incompatible with open source software, and the natural reaction is to free up or move on to something you can actually develop software freely for. The notion of open source software means that nothing can be kept secret. That's the direction that things head in, and I would have thought that Nokia would have been all for it as it helps them sell more phones.

    As an industry, we plan to use open-source technologies but we are not yet ready to play by the rules; but this needs to work the other way round too.
    You either play by the rules or there is no dialogue, and it ultimately harms you as well. I've never seen a successful 'mixed source' software company.

    Don't make your own version. The original mistake we made was to take the code to our labs, change it and then release it at the last minute. The community had already gone in a different direction than [us], and no-one was pushing it other than [us].
    Tough luck. If people want things like ogg support then they'll go and get it. Forking is a fundamental freedom, and it will happen more often unless you play by the rules more.

    "a huge responsibility from a desktop and user interface point of view to see how we play our cards"
    Rrrrrrrrright. What does that mean?

    and expressed a keenness to see KDE and Gnome brought "closer".
    Do some Googling on the last ten years. They are divergent codebases, and while they share lots of libraries like X, I don't know what he means by 'closer'. It's as good as it gets.

    Jaaksi added that he believed Symbian, the proprietary operating system in which Nokia has a major share, would still "in years to come [be] the best platform on which to create smart phones".
    So we get to what the problem really is, and why he's being defensive about LiMo. As time moved on the odds are that the platform of choice will be Linux and an open source GUI because of the very advantages from the very freedoms and rules that he derides. Manufacturers can pick up the code, not have to worry about NDAs, IP and exorbitant fees, and get on with it. Qt will probably lead the way with Qtopia and GUI toolkits on Linux based phones. It's about cost cutting and economies of scale. Nokia will either join the wagon or fall off it, and being defensive with Symbian is a bad idea.

    • Re:uh-oh (Score:5, Informative)

      by geminidomino (614729) * on Friday June 13 2008, @08:17AM (#23777049) Homepage Journal

      If so, we could fork it (being GPL... the BSD license wouldn't allow us that freedom).
      Stop spreading FUD. If it was BSD licensed, you COULD still fork it. Take the last BSD licensed version, fork from that, poof. Same as with the GPL.

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