by SmallFurryCreature (593017) on 2006-02-03 7:37 (#14634994)

The biggest difference between Linus Torvald and Richard Stallman is that Linus is an optomist and Richard is a pessimist.

Linus seems to walk in world all his own. Somehow he seems to think that we can vote with our dollars to force the hardware makers to cater for our non-drm needs. Right.

Has he got some other figures on linux use? It is already hard enough to get hardware makers to support linux besides closed source software like windows. But for hardware makers to develop non-drm hardware for just the linux market is insane. Linux is Linux because it runs on cheap easily available hardware. Specialist hardware or worse having to make you own would kill Linux fast.

What he maybe doesn't get that DRM isn't a analog state. It is binary. You either have it or you don't. Oh, and at the moment, we don't. We got a sorta DRM0.1 at the moment. FULL DRM will be a beast few can imagine. Certainly Linus doesn't seem capable. Stallman is capable.

FULL DRM means that ALL hardware and ALL software in your entire computer will be DRM aware. Hardware DRM will not work with NON-DRM software and/or NON-DRM hardware.

For DRM to realize its full potential EVERY piece of your computer must be DRMed. The motherboard, the CPU, the memory, the buses, the cables, the monitor, the speaker, etc etc. It cannot have a single open piece of hardware because the moment you have that the entire DRM chain becomes useless. It is the old argument against DRM that you will always still be capable of capturing the out put of any DRM device. As long as you can hear/see it you can recapture data no matter how it was protected before.

Que the old story of Vista requiring DRM monitors. if you don't then you could simply hookup a DVI cable to the output and put in a video capture device and instantly avoid any DRM measure.

Will Vista really do this? probably not, as I said before we don't have full DRM yet. We probably won't have it in Vista either. But it is coming unless we stop it now.

It is difficult to constantly be paranoid and think that behind every wintel move there must be an evil scheme but can we afford to be wrong?

Then there is Linus defence of DRM namely signing RPM packages. Well yeah, signing them makes it secure but what is that saying again? He who trades his freedom for security soon will have neither? Something like this.

We could have the security of knowing who wrote the software we run OR we can have the freedom to write and run our own software. Not both. Your choice.