Bonum Certa Men Certa

Pipelight Project is Trouble, Helps Microsoft and Helps DRM

Summary: A reasonably new project strives to make the Web a binary conduit of DRM-laden 'content', even for GNU/Linux users

MICROSOFT has already given up on Silverlight -- its attempt to establish lock-in on the Web (worse than ActiveX) which was aided by another defunct project from a Microsoft MVP and mole. This has not, however, totally eliminated the efforts to pollute the Web with DRM, binary extensions, etc. Some project called Pipelight is trying to put Microsoft Silverlight right inside GNU/Linux. "A proposal has been submitted for having Microsoft Silverlight plug-in support in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS as part of the main archive via the Pipelight project," Michael Larabel writes. "Previous to that there was work in 2012 for a patched version of Wine to get Netflix on Linux."



This project which is run by Erich Hoover, Michael Müller, and Sebastian Lackner is not helping GNU/Linux. It is not a good thing. Netflix, which is closely connected to Microsoft, does a horrible thing by promoting DRM on the Web (even at standardisation level) and Microsoft is fighting against the open Web. We need to reject this, not become 'compatible' with it.

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