Linspire Inc. the company formerly known as Lindows announced on November 18 that it has licensed Windows Media technology and made it immediately available via a click-and-run online update to the users of the Linux distro.
News source: TheInquirer The press release touting the company’s Windows Media embrace gave some interesting details “Previously, Windows Media files would typically work on users’ machines only if they found and installed unlicensed codecs online then patched them into their operating system. In contrast, Linspire licensed the codecs directly from Microsoft, then made substantial changes to make the Windows Media code work on Linux-based systems. The engineering required porting the complete Windows CE Windows Media code to Linux.”
However, in the note, the company’s CEO Michael Robertson lamented the Microsoft’s unwillingness to licence its DRM technology to Linux, making Linspire unable to access DRM encoded content from sites like Napster, MusicMatch, and Buy.com. “Linspire is unable to play content that is encoded with Microsoft’s Digital Rights Management (DRM) software.
Since most online commercial music stores implement DRM on all of their files, it is impossible for desktop Linux users to use these sites. Linspire requested a DRM license to complete their support of Windows Media, but was rebuffed by Microsoft, who said they will not license a general computing platform” the press release yawns.
