Comment by TallGuyShort | Hacker News Reader

Comment by TallGuyShort | Hacker News Reader

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Because it's still not worth it. I find it inconvenient too, so I'm not disagreeing with you that it would be great, but I disagree with the attitude I've seen in several comments that this Netflix isn't being open here. They've released everything they feasibly can. They're under no obligation to develop a client for the operating system you and I happen to use.

edit: I just noticed you did acknowledge the small user base. So, that being the case, are you actually arguing that some executive at Netlifx is like, "Nah - screw open source - we totally have the spare resources to develop a Linux client that will have a negligible return on investment, but they can suck it?" If it's not worth it, they won't do it. It's like accusing Linus Torvalds of not being open because he hasn't yet supported your feature-of-choice from some other OS.

The reason I won't accuse Linus of not being open even though he doesn't support my feature-of-choice is because while he ditches my idea saying it is crap, he still gives me the source to mess with. So, I or a friend can make the change for me and I can be happy and content.

Here's another analogy : It's like Microsoft Studios talking about how the development team used a Linux based compile farm and testbed for their new game but nevertheless, the game itself won't run on Linux.

Netflix has to make business decisions on what platforms to support via which DRM technologies work for them and their Hollywood suppliers. I'm just thankful they still exist at all and I don't have to rent DVDs anymore.

They don't "owe" anyone anything. It's a for-profit company, and they're being generous with their infrastructure source.

If Microsoft Studios released the sourcecode to any modifications they used, or even just documented the setup they used for that compilefarm, I'd be grateful for the contribution. Yeah, it's not as good as opensourcing the game and porting it to linux, bsd, solaris et all.. but it's still a contribution to the community that they had no need to make.

For the record, I was a netflix subscriber and canceled a long time ago because of inaccessibility of their instant video service--If it won't run on xbmc, I'm better off getting it somewhere else like amazon Prime. I even told them as much. I still appreciate them releasing all of this stuff though.

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