[vlc-devel] Re: Compilation for WinCE succesful

[Stephane]

Ah, too bad. The creation of a specific interface, as stated in
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#LinkingWithGPL
is out of the question?

This does not solve the problem of patching the decoders,
but this could be solved by only statically linking the libraries,
and controlling which modules are active via some kind of
'module manager'. This module manager could then again be patched of course,
so you may be right...

Well, back to the drawing boards then.

Stephane van Hardeveld

> > 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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