Re: Flame Linus to a crisp!

Linus Torvalds
2003-04-26T18:35:40Z

On Sat, 26 Apr 2003 viro@parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 26, 2003 at 06:22:50PM +0000, Linus Torvalds wrote:
>
> > We've seen this before. Remember when dongles were plentiful in the
> > software world? People literally had problems with having dongles on top
> > of dongles to run a few programs. They all died out, simply because
> > consumers _hate_ that kind of lock-in thing.
>
> Not all of them. And they had spawned similar software turds - ask
> any sysadmin who'd dealt with FlexLM and its ilk and you'll hear a
> _lot_ of horror stories about the induced inconveniencies and breakage.

But that's exactly my point. These companies are (in the long run) just
shooting themselves in the foot.

Sure, they still exist. But they are a niche market (and, btw, you can
almost always tell which programs still do it: overpriced products for
niche markets that don't have enough competition).

Any area where there has been even an _ounce_ of competition has dropped
the DRM crap like a hot potato, because users wouldn't stand for it.

> > _designed_ ot be flexible - that's what makes the PC's. DRM on a PC is
> > a totally braindead idea, and I _hope_ Microsoft goes down that path
> > because it will kill them in the end.
>
> Wolfram Research is still alive. Remember Mathematica?

And this makes my point invalid exactly _how_?

Linus