Hello,
I am writing to you for ask , What is the way to make complaint about strategy of Open Source Code of Streaming model ?
I bought WD Live Streaming, because this kind of products are recognized in market for politics of Open Source Code, and now, some parts of CODE, are encripted.
Can you read this post ( http://forum.wdlxtv.com/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=6110&p=51260&hilit=streaming#p51259 ) and tell me what is the way to make a complaint about this ?
Do you know if WD is evaluating open all source code ?
Regards
Bernardo
Well the GPL code is in the same place it has always been. http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=1011&sid=161&lang=en
Don’t know why you are disappointed.
They feel entitled to the proprietary code, too.
The OP doesn’t understand the difference between proprietary and open source code.
Well, he has a point. The LIVE-S has parts encrypted that weren’t with the old LIVE which apparently makes a modded firmware highly unlikely. No matter how I look at it, this makes no sense whatsoever.
It makes perfect sense from a business point of view.
Those people quickly figured out how to run HUB code on the OLD WDTV Live… basically that would make it a WDTV Live SMP (without WiFi) thus stripping WD of revenue for upgrades…
Like it or not, it’s revenue protection.
Sorry,
But, Nobody told me what is the way to make a complain
Regards
Complain about what?
The open source code for the device is available for download. Under the GPL license you are entitled to have access to this code.
The proprietary code is just that, proprietary and is not available. You are not entitled to have access to this code either in source form or binary form.
Revenue protection is of course one point to consider. Still, I guess there are many people that won’t buy the device because it can’t be modded anymore so they loose even more potential business.
I’ve wondered, myself, how many people actually do modding. I can’t help but think, due to the risk and complexity of much of that stuff, that it’s a rather small percentage…
And from reading the WDLXTV forums, the mods most people are using are, with increasing frequency, being accomplished with the stock firmware or themes.
I’m guessing the only ones who know how common Modding is are the RMA depots … from the people that RMA their boxes due to botched mods. :)
WD may be a large prominent hard drive manufacturer; in the digital video market, the WD streaming boxes are a small market compared to the cable, satellite, internet streaming and the portable tablet market.
A number of chip manufacturers are competing in the digital video market marketplace; the most prominent are Sigma, Broadcom, STMicroelectronics. All three use the same design principles to achieve the same end result. A low powered CPU is used to display a GUI, and hardware digital video processing chips are designed compliant to the international digital video production and transmission standards.
All a manufacturer is legally required to release is the GPL licensed software. All the video hardware chips manufacturers have the same policy; they will not release details of the dedicated digital video hardware chips or the hardware drivers. If they do then their competitors will reverse engineer their chips and gain a market advantage.
If virgin DVD and bluray disks are cleanly ripped then they will play through media streaming boxes. The re-occurring issue is that people are trying to play incompatible computer processed video through a hardware chip never designed for that purpose. If people lack the technical skills to process video through a computer, don’t complain when the hardware streaming boxes will not process the digital video.
The aftermarket reprogramming for any product is relatively small compared with the product sales. Judging by my visits to various forums, I would say well under 1%.
All manufacturers use JTAG programming techniques. A competent programmer can recover any bricked box instantly using the original backup code. Unfortunately, most of the so called programmers circulating on the net are amateur code hackers lacking basic programming recovery skills.
