> 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.
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.