So, ysss, how are you going to help Nokia fight pirates?

@fms: no idea, they're not talking.

the same way you want control over your n900 the developers that have put money into developing the s/w want control over their s/w.

I think DRM is the way to go until we can find something better, it attracts developers to the platform and ensures they can earn a few bob for their hard work.

although Im not sure how drm will work with meego which open source - anyone care to enlighten me?

They aren't truly entitled to any control beyond copyright, EULAs are simply a rights landgrab of dubious value. But no worries, even terrible studios/developers will chalk their losses up to piracy and demand more control.

Well if you buy a MeeGo based Nokia device, it works until you switch your phone into "open" mode. Basically, in closed mode the TrustZone logic in the CPU verifies the bootloader, which verifies the kernel, which checks the root file system and imposes restrictions on the user. Basically, negating the "open source" aspect is the only way to implement DRM on such systems.

Very few sincere developers want control over their software.

What most of us want is:
1) Deliver high quality software
2) Be paid for it (which is a direct consequence of 1)

Neither one requires (or justifies) keeping control over our software after selling it to a customer. Customers trust us not to mess up their system while we trust them not to spread our (plain text) source code.

Do we have customers who abuse that trust? Occasionally.
Does that result in us restricting our customer's rights and bastardising our software to keep them from doing it? No.

Because that's not how you treat a fellow company - and that shouldn't be the way to treat a private customer, either.

(@ysss: No, not Blender - more like the other side: ready made models to pose, arrange and then render.)

As far as TrustZone goes, I'm inclined to believe you're correct. With relation to DRM as a whole, I think open source DRM is completely possible, completely practical, and probably a potential solution to making DRM actually work.

From an end user perspective there is no sane reason for DRM to exist. Period. We assume 'transfer of ownership' occurs when we hand over the cash. I bought it, it's mine. This is the mentality the corporate world is against - I don't make the rules : )

From a corporate perspective naturally they want every download or installation to be counted and paid for. Who doesn't, we all want to keep food on the table. Transfer of ownership is artificially restricted or outright prohibited, the end user has merely purchased the ability to do whatever the license terms dictate. This isn't always a bad thing, sometimes the terms are reasonable.

Do we want MeeGo to have DRM? As long as it doesn't get in my way then for me, sure, no problem. That means I expect to be able to transfer my purchased items between my mobile devices and my desktop PC. In the case of music or video, I expect to be able to enjoy such purchases across the board on whatever phone I buy or whatever computer I have. If I can't do that, then no sale. Simple really.

There are plenty of studies out there that show piracy does increase for items without DRM obviously enough, but those same studies also show an increase in legitimate purchases too. You'll never stamp out piracy, but if you want to increase your bottom line, DRM is perhaps not the way to do it.

The N900 is an amazing bit of kit, it is so vastly at odds with most other items on the market when it comes to openness - this is also its downfall in a way I guess, commercial 3rd parties don't really want to port their applications across.

It's complicated.

In some ways Nokia does have a remote kill switch - it's called the firmware update - plenty of examples in the Symbian world of small updates that do nothing much other than to close off exploited holes in its platform security.

Again, it's only "open source" if I can change it and replace the bits in the system I changed. If I can do that, I can defeat the DRM completely. DRM is the antithesis of open. And frankly, I do not want it to work. I want every DRM solution to fail, and those who imposed it to lose the money they spent on it.

Without DRM, a lot of other 3rd party developers - the bigger companies - will shun the OS. And all opposed to DRM, most for very good reasons, will have to inevitably oppose the commercially supported release of MeeGo and hope that the community based MeeGo delivers. Or some shades of grey therein.

It will have DRM built in to satisfy the Electronic Arts, UBISoft and others that are pegged to deliver support for the MeeGo OS.

What I don't personally get - this is off topic - is how people are against DRM, for FOSS, yet have no dispute with having closed bits within a supposedly open OS. To me, that's a tad bit ironic since those bits do not have better community versions/iterations.

DRM, I'm not a fan of it at all. Liked it when iTunes got rid of it, same for Amazon (music).

Well, I certainly will. I'll end up buying Nokia if they're the only one that allows me to switch the DRM off before first boot (or worse yet, at all.)

There is dispute. No one wants closed binaries in MeeGo, and there won't be. For the N900-specific release, however, it looks like the only closed bit to be distributed will be the 3D libs from Imagination (if the BME replacement pops up,) and we can't -force- them to open up. The difference between closed libs and DRM is that DRM is effectively the vendor trying to retain ownership over the device and telling me what I can and can't do with it. A closed source binary is annoying but I can still take total control of my device and, should I desire, try to implement a replacement.