For a company who's founder talks so negatively about closed formats and DRM, it might be news to you that Linspire Inc themselves implement closed format files and DRM in their own products.

Linspire Inc's flag ship product applies DRM to every peice of software you download with their proprietary CNR software. You are given the opportunity to store your downloaded software in a file format with the extension '.cnr', which is nothing more than an encrypted Debian package file. The result of this is that you are prevented from using the software you download on any other Linux system without Linspire's permission. The CNR installer is required to 'phone home' whenever you want to install any software, just to make sure you have their permission to use it.

What is even more puzzling about this is the majority of the software Linspire delivers is GPL'd. The GPL license entitles you to copy, modify and redistribute your software, so Linspire has no legal protection to prevent you from doing this. But still they are trying to do it anyway.

Fortunately current CNR files are easy to crack, but that might not always be the case.

If you don't think Linspire Inc should have the right to prevent you from using your own (Free) software in any way you wish then email them and tell them so. I have made my own views clear to them. In the meantime here is a program you can use to decrypt these files: cnrtodeb.deb

Link:- http://www.squiggleos.org/nodrmpleaselinspire.php

pathetic, linspire has always been garbage from day one.

i still remember the good days of lindows...

quote Michael Robertson from Linspire:-

I don't think Apple or Microsoft are intentionally evil. I just think that corporations cannot resist the urge to block competitors and squeeze customers at every turn. If Microsoft controls what software I can run, they will charge a lot of money for that software because I will be locked in. If Apple has control, they will make it only work on their hardware, which won't be cheap. I don't want any company - even Linspire - controlling my digital world. If a corporation controls my PC, my software or how I use my digital property, then I really don't own it. Historian Lord Acton said it best:

(in light of this, what appears to be DRM you may enjoy the whole read, heres the link:- http://michaelrobertson.com/archive.php?minute_id=168 )


talk about people in glass houses not throwing stones!!

Linspire is a joke...

They take the reason of open-source Linux down...

It appears that Linspire, instead of denying it, are attempting to deflect attention away and point people against the author of this story and lock the thread - they must be in denial - http://forum.linspire.com/viewtopic.php?t=417129

this story has also appeared on newsforge, Linspire.co.uk, Linuxforums and many other sites around the globe. Its interesting why they dont give an explanation. (I hope MS and Apple are watching this as its a real lesson in PR for them!! )