[vlc-devel] Re: Compilation for WinCE succesful

[Christophe Massiot]

On Fri, Jan 17, 2003, Stephane wrote:

> > This is great. I suppose that you already know that according to the GPL
> > license, your derived work must be placed under the GPL license too, and
> > thus open-sourced ? And you may only link with GPL-compatible libraries ?
> > (this is approximative, more info here :
> > http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html)
> Yes, we are aware of this. This could become an issue, because we would like
> to
> keep the DRM part separate from the GPL, for obvious reasons. The call into
> the DRM system may be open, even so that other parties can incorporate their
> own DRM system, but the decryption and especially the processing of
> subscription
> data should remain more or less 'secret', at least it should not be possible
> for another user of your software to use his/her own adapted copy to 'hack'
> into DRM protected files.

Since the decoder itself must remain under the GPL, nothing will prevent
a user from patching VLC to write the decrypted stream to a file.

> Any suggestions on how to solve this issue (Lesser GPL?) would be welcome:)

A license change for VLC and all third-party libraries we use is
impossible. Plus lesser GPL wouldn't help you either, since the user
could still patch the LGPL part to retrieve the decrypted stream.

Personally I have come to the conclusion that it is legally impossible
to do DRM with open-source software.

-- 
Christophe Massiot.
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