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Comment by wmf | Hacker News Reader

(2014)

Although this is relevant again since they also decided to put DRM in Firefox OS for the Matchstick (curiously, the plan is Adobe DRM for desktop Firefox and Microsoft DRM for Matchstick; corrections/clarifications are welcome).

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Matchstick isn't a Mozilla project, is it? It happens to be built on Firefox OS code, but anyone can use that code, and Matchstick is made by a third party. Mozilla can't prevent someone from building a Firefox OS product and adding Microsoft DRM to it.

So I think the "they" in your statement there might be confusing, as it seems to imply Mozilla is doing something here.

(btw, I hadn't heard about this latest development with matchstick regarding Microsoft DRM, link?)

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/matchstick/matchstick-t...

Update 16. It went out on Friday.

Thanks for the link.

This is kind of surprising to me, that Microsoft would license PlayReady for a non-Microsoft platform, in this case Matchstick. I wonder if their policy was always that way, but it just didn't happen, or if it changed?

Microsoft wants its DRM to be supported on all platforms, otherwise it would irrelevant on mobile. PlayReady is available on Android, iOS, smart TVs, and set-top boxes (which most likely run Linux instead of Windows CE these days :)

http://www.microsoft.com/playready/features/

Firefox OS itself needs a lot of proprietary stuff (Drivers, etc), however.

But meh, drivers.

Matchstick is not a Mozilla project. The Matchstick company has been (deliberately?) fast and loose with its marketing around Mozilla's and content providers' brand names.

http://www.matchstick.tv/about/

I've been rather irritated with the amount of sites reporting Matchstick as a Mozilla project, and again just recently. They did work with Mozilla early on to get casting running in Firefox Android to their prototype and it does have the "certified by Mozilla" label.

Hopefully their efforts on MSE and EME will help expedite development in Firefox so that Youtube doesn't suck as much.

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