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Netflix Touts Open Source, Ignores Linux
Julie188 writes "If Netflix loves open source, where's the Linux client? Last week's post from Netflix on its use of open source has gotten a lot of coverage from the tech press. Too bad nobody's called the video giant out on its hypocrisy: They benefit greatly from open source, but really don't care to let their customers do the same."
My little Roku box that sits next to my TV and plays Netflix is built on Linux apparently. In a developer discussion about why there was no Linux desktop player I got the impression that the sticking point was the ease of siphoning off the video stream in a system where you can compile your own kernel was the real problem.
How are open source programmers supposed to implement a Linux port of a proprietary, third-party streaming platform based on Silverlight? Reverse engineering? More importantly, how do they convince Netflix to use it?
From the Netflix website:
"The great thing about a good open source project that solves a shared challenge is that it develops it's own momentum and it is sustained for a long time by a virtuous cycle of continuous improvement. At Netflix we jumped on for the ride a long time ago and we have benefited enormously from the virtuous cycles of actively evolving open source projects. We benefit from the continuous improvements provided by the community of contributors outside of Netflix. We also benefit by contributing back the changes we make to the projects. By sharing our bug fixes and new features back out into the community, the community then in turn continues to improve upon bug fixes and new features that originated at Netflix and then we complete the cycle by bring those improvements back into Netflix."
"Here is an incomplete sampling of the projects we utilize, we have contributed back to most of them: Hudson, Hadoop, Hive, Honu, Apache, Tomcat, Ant, Ivy, Cassandra, HBase, etc, etc."
http://techblog.netflix.com/2010/12/why-we-use-and-contribute-to-open.html
They are mooching.
They have taken from the commons and aren't giving back.
Wrong. They contribute to the projects they use.
"Here is an incomplete sampling of the projects we utilize, we have contributed back to most of them: Hudson, Hadoop, Hive, Honu, Apache, Tomcat, Ant, Ivy, Cassandra, HBase, etc, etc."
http://techblog.netflix.com/2010/12/why-we-use-and-contribute-to-open.html
The Netflix streams are all have proprietary DRM protection. To write our own client we would have to reverse engineer this proprietary protocol (which is legal, but can be difficult), and then worse, we would have hack the authorized players, and to get the DRM keys out of them. This implementation would constitute a circumvention device, and using or distributing it would be illegal under the DMCA.
Asking open source customers to break the law to use your service isn't exactly friendly to open source.
Netflix doesn't open source its client. This is not something that they control. They have various deals with various content providers that stipulate that they use DRM in their streaming solution. If they made an open-source client, it would defeat the purpose of the DRM. (Yes, DRM doesn't work and blah blah blah, but this is a business requirement, not a technical requirement. If you want to get mad at them about it, get mad at Hollywood instead.)
AFAIK, Netflix generally doesn't implement its own DRM, but instead uses the DRM from whatever platform they distribute on. The do have a "Linux" version if you count Android, but the company has claimed that they've had difficulty using it due to platform fragmentation and because it doesn't implement all of the features they need to satisfy their studio agreements. They've said they have to develop for one device at a time.
And that's with Android's libraries. So when you're asking for a Linux client for Netflix, you're not just asking for a port of their Windows or Mac clients, you're asking them to spend a lot of extra dollars to develop a closed-source DRM solution for a small market that hates DRM (and closed-sourced, to a lesser extent). Where is the sense in that? If Netflix did make a Linux client, submitters would be crawling on top of each other screaming, "Netflix Trying to Destroy Linux With Evil Client From Hell."
On the other hand, it's nice that they contribute to other projects.
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
Wrong, they are giving back tons. Speaking personally, I know for a fact they have contributed to Hadoop. Their blog site claims they've contributed to lots of others.
Yes, Google does not treat Linux users as first rate consumers. However, they do at least acknowledge our existence (Google Earth, Picasa (kindof), chrome, Android Dev tools). What NetFlix does is completely ignore us. By some definitions you could even argue that they actively ignore us (Seriously, silverlight? WTF?).
Ignore you? Who the f* are you? Who the lot of you represent? The majority of Linux users are ... *tada* admins running heavy shit on Linux, not desktop users. First and foremost to start with.
Second, what are your contribution to FOSS? Specially compared to NetFlix.
"Here is an incomplete sampling of the projects we utilize, we have contributed back to most of them: Hudson, Hadoop, Hive, Honu, Apache, Tomcat, Ant, Ivy, Cassandra, HBase, etc, etc." http://techblog.netflix.com/2010/12/why-we-use-and-contribute-to-open.html [netflix.com]
Just because they don't cater to your specific, alternative-desktop-niche needs that doesn't mean they are smooching to open source. What you are presenting here is simply an argument of convenience. No logic whatsoever behind it. Second, they are under NO obligation to actually even acknowledge your existence. Why should they? Since when open source users and contributors have to acknowledge *you*? They are in the business of maximizing delivery of copyrighted media, and maximizing does not mean catering to *everyone* but to the majority of the market segment.
Whether you like it or not, silverlight (a proprietary product that can actually allow you to create open source applications) is an excellent tool for doing just that (since it is integrated and runs on top of the CLR)... and if it runs in silverlight, it might run on Mono's moonlight (not sure on this, though. Go do some volunteer work on it if you feel so strongly about it - instead of expecting Netflix to bend to your capricious bidding.)
There is nothing in that operational scheme of things that is against producing, consuming and contributing back to open source software projects.
That people actually cry momma and question Netflix's contributions to open source because it doesn't produce a client for their private pet desktops (and without offering to volunteer in creating or working with Netflix for creating a Linux client), man, that's the apex of /. stupidity.
What I do have is a couple UNIX boxes that are completely capable of fetching data over a network and displaying it on screen. There's absolutely no reason I should have to buy another piece of hardware to do that.
You're right. Install Windows and your hardware should work fine.
Dude, if they had actually released the source code to their client, someone would have already ported it to Linux (heck, I would do it nobody else stepped up). Netflix uses open source tools in the course of doing business. That is very different than actually releasing their product as open source.
The Bolachek Journals
The point is that failure to provide authorized copies that work (and "work" implies "are not DRMed"), is a strong incentive for people to use unauthorized copies.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
I don't think it is Netflix exactly. This is the first I have heard that they support Open Source in a public way at all.
Netflix is powerless to do anything about this really. It's all Microsoft. Netflix chose to use Silverlight as their platform and a Microsoft based DRM platform. Silverlight is ported to Linux, the DRM is not.
So it is not that the Netflix client would not work on Linux... it will and it does. It's just that the client would never be able to display the content since the DRM will never be ported to Linux. Of course you never even get that far because Netflix detects your environment and sends you to a warning page instead.
All Netflix has to do to get a Linux client working is change out their DRM model... which will be shortly after snowballs are found lying around in Hell.
Silverlight is not the main reason for a lack of Linux support on the desktop as netflix works perfectly fine in Linux. As proof look at the thousands of netflix capable players. Bluray players, set top players from western digital, netgear, and others have netflix support and they all run Linux of some form. I have been through the firmware on many of those devices and there isn't a single line of code for silverlight or even microsoft. Instead they rely on the boxes ability to generate a hardware key programmed into the boxes to generate the algorithms that decode content. The same thing could be done with the pc , trusted platform modules have existed for many many years but nobody uses it for fear of big brother tracking them . If you want netflix and probably other DRM content services on linux then you need to come up with a way to lock a specific hardware id to a specific pc that can protect the contents path all the way from the network to the video card that the public is willing to allow. This is not netflix doing. Blame the MPAA that sets a requirement that the content can only be streamed to devices that have a protected media path, currently linux doesn't have that in any form open or closed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_Media_Path