Subject: Re: Bug#531221: okular: Arbitrarily enforces DRM

From: Stefano Zacchiroli <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 31 May 2009 14:42:33 +0200

On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 02:30:58AM +0100, Adeodato Simó wrote:
> I see it's been pointed out in a comment in your blog post already,
> but I'll mention it here for the benefit of those reading along:
> obeying DRM is a configurable runtime option in Okular, so it's just
> a matter of going to the preferences dialog and unchecking the "Obey
> DRM" check box.

I've just read Pino Toscano's answer, and I found it a reasonable
choice from an *upstream author point of view*. They want okular to
fully implement the spec, to be able to sell it as a feature.

Of course, downstream distribution editors (i.e., us) can make
different choices, to better implement the philosophy of their
distro. Considering that upstream already implemented the mechanism
for choosing at runtime, I see an easy way out.

- If okular has a system-wide setting "Obey DRM" which acts as a
  default for user choices, we have already won: the Debian package
  maintainer is fully in charge of making the choice of what that
  default should be.

- If it has not, I guess adding support for such system-wide setting
  should be easy enough to do.

FWIW If I were the package maintainer, my choice would be not to "Obey
DRM" by default, but I'm not.

Cheers.

-- 
Stefano Zacchiroli -o- PhD in Computer Science \ PostDoc @ Univ. Paris 7
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