Sun's DReaM - could it just be that?
A number of news sites (here for example) are reporting Sun’s latest open source foray, with the announcement of that it plans to release it’s digital rights management (DRM) project, DReaM under Sun’s open source Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL) as the foundation for what it refers to as the ‘Open Media Commons’. Jonathan Schwartz, who made the announcement at a Progress and Freedom Foundation conference in Aspen over the weekend, gave some pretty strong hints that this was coming in a blog post the day before.I think few would question Sun’s objectives here (although some in the open source community do question the merits of DRM at all!). Open, royalty-free, broadly adopted DRM standards would certainly benefit consumers by breaking down DRM-enforced content stovepipes. It would also benefit other participants throughout the digital media supply chain (particularly smaller organisations and individuals) by eliminating potentially costly royalties associated with the use of DRM patents. However, I think the fact that Schwartz was unable to announce any partners is indicative of the challenges ahead for Sun. Sun needs the involvement of the big industry players – Apple, Disney, Sony, Time Warner etc etc – for this initiative to succeed and, if previous history is anything to go by, they will be reluctant to cede the control that proprietary DRM solutions provide. According to the news commentary, Schwartz cited the success of the Liberty Alliance Project as providing grounds for optimism but I am not so sure. The success of Liberty is due in no small part to the realisation that federated identity management is a key enabler of online business models and that proprietary approaches are counter-productive – that’s not the case yet with DRM. Liberty also benefited from early participation of a significant number of enterprise users of technology, which helped to keep the suppliers honest. Microsoft, by virtue of Windows Media, its controlling interest in one of the major DRM-related patent portfolios (through joint ownership of Content Guard with Time Warner and Thomson) , its dominance on the consumer desktop etc etc, has to buy in if the Open Media Commons is to realise its laudable aims. Whether or not Sun can persuade its newfound partner in Seattle to relinquish its control for the sake of the broader good will be a real test for the Sun-Microsoft alliance.
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