Re: Why DRM exists [was Re: Flame Linus to a crisp!]

Matthias Andree
2003-04-27T23:22:51Z

On Sun, 27 Apr 2003, Larry McVoy wrote:

> But you are still missing the point. As long as the feeling is that it is
> OK to reverse engineer by staring at the file formats, the corporations
> will respond by encrypting the data you want to stare at.
>
> In other words, it's pretty much hopeless to try and catch up that way,
> you might as well go try and build something better from the start.

Wouldn't you still want to import "old" data into the new BetterApp?

Changes of the format or interface are painful, we've seen this with the
network filtering in Linux several times, 2.0 had ipfwadm, 2.2 had
ipchains, 2.4 has compatibility interfaces for either and its native
netfilter... There must have been a better reason to add compatibility
than just "because we could do it."