Netflix touts open source, ignores Linux

What does their lack of support of a Linux player have to do with their use of open source software in their product?

Netflix is a business with finicky business partners (content owners), and their embrace of FOSS doesn't mean they're required or even allowed to offer an open video streaming solution.

I think the fact that they're contributing to the projects they use is far more important. This article reads like sour grapes.

Netflix is a business. Regardless of their stance on open source software, they allocate resources to meet the demands of the market. The market for Netflix on Linux is vanishingly small. I use Linux, but if I were Netflix I'd ignore me, too.

Relevant comment from the original Netflix blog post:

http://techblog.netflix.com/2010/12/why-we-use-and-contribut...

> If you guys reread this blog post a little slower, you might realize Netflix seeks employees here, not customers.

> Netflix is a DRM company: they deliver Hollywood content to eyeballs securely locked inside DRM wrappers in exchange for a cut of the fees flowing back to Hollywood. It's difficult to do this job well enough to satisfy the studios that the studios' Claw can reach into livingrooms and control what people do with their movies. This difficulty is the barrier-to-entry that makes Netflix's growth possible, and makes the cut they can demand of the studios large enough to be worth their while.

> Make no mistake, if you work for Netflix, you will be primarily collaborating in this project. Nothing else is bottom-line.

> That's what makes all these comments seem so silly to me. While a prospective customer might be using Linux because it's $0, or because he likes to rice out his peecee and tinker, or because he has some Media Box that works well in the living room and requires Linux, none of these are the reasons a desireable geek would give for using Linux.

> The smartest geeks---the ones you want as employees---use Linux because they want software freedom. That's why I use it. This freedom has been critical to my professional development, as well as my sense of individual empowerment in the world. And it's largely a desire for this empowerment that drove me into this field to begin with.

> A Linux Netflix client is certainly very possible, but software freedom will never be compatible with DRM, because if you really had software freedom, the first thing a rational person would do with it would be to remove all the DRM! Yes, a Linux client may some day exist, but a client with software freedom---the only kind of client that's interesting to the smart geeks Netflix should want to hire---can never exist. It's fundamentally impossible.

> It's my sincere hope that this impossibile gap between the true ideals of software freedom and Netflix's core business will limit their applicant pool to dizzy-headed second-rate developers. It's really shocking to me to see Netflix trolling for hires by dangling a penguin cape when their entire business is fundamentally about red-cape Digital Restrictions Management unfreedom.

It is very simple why netflix does not offer a linux solution:

The most important thing to remember is: Offering a desktop linux client will gain them a miniscule number of customers.

Now remembering the overriding point above, consider the following and decide if it's worth it.

* They can't just offer a linux client. They can offer an ubuntu client, or a fedora client, etc.

* Linux video is a mess. I still don't have an adequate vsync aware solution for playing videos on all my graphics cards. Fortunately they would probably bundle their own decoder, so they wouldn't have to pick the poison of xine or gstreamer (which are both much improved in the past couple years, but still have their problems)

* A subpar linux offering would be harmful to their brand image (far more than a nonexistent one) and expensive in terms of customer support. Remember, a large fraction of Netflix's customers are early adopters, so are likely to have a linux box. (They have a ps3 or a wii or a mac or a windows box, which is how they stream right now)

* A proposed benefit of supporting linux would be that OSS proponents wouldn't bitch and moan. Adding a DRMed video streaming program to linux isn't likely to change that.

There's no good reason for Netflix to risk its business model by ruining its relationship with their nervous and twitchy content providers over fears of ZOMG NO DRM! for the sake of Watch Instantly on Linux desktops. I wish this weren't the case because that's main hole in my Linux/Boxee HTPC.

But surely Netflix knows it has to address Android (and maybe even Chrome OS) eventually. How/if they pull that off will be interesting to say the least.

The netflix PS3 player until recently was a java (BD-J) application shipped on a non-encrypted blu-ray disc. Can't somebody extract the jars from that?

There's also a netflix app for the Boxee Box, an Intel 32-bit Linux device. The box ships locked down but has already been rooted/jailbroken. Couldn't one extract the app from that too?

HTML5 will bridge the gap. Here's a Netflix job posting: http://jobs.netflix.com/DetailFlix.asp?jobid=flix4467

Netflix also bought into Microsoft's Silverlight sales pitch. Microsoft originally pitched Silverlight as a platform with robust 3rd party implementation. Microsoft even funded work at Novell so that Moonlight could be used with the 2008 Olympics sight. As Microsoft has pivoted to HTML5, Microsoft became less interested in providing a DRM layer to Moonlight. Linux users will be well served when the DRM components to HTML5 video become available and widely implemented.

I think the main reason they don't have a Linux player is that their current offering is based on Silverlight.

A netflix linux client does exist-- the roku box. But that's more of an embedded system.

I know its a small market but it would be nice to watch Netflix on the cr48.