Cyril Doussin

web developer

DRM, Apple and freedom in computing

written by Cyril, on Jan 31, 2010 4:43:00 PM.

I love free software. I’ve learnt my profession thanks to it. But it shouldn’t be mandated everywhere. In light of the recent iPad announcement by Apple, and the raging outcries it is causing, let me declare my appreciation for closed systems.

Everybody and their dog seems to be screaming from the rooftops that Apple is creating the death of freedom in computing. All because Apple has created an ecosystem where DRM is present at a few different levels. I call bullshit.

DRM is a joke. Everybody knows that, Apple first, they’ve had to deal with it for a while.

Nevertheless they persist in using it. Why? It’s all well and good to declare “Apple is evil”, but let’s look at the situation and where Apple is using DRM.

DRM in iTunes media from third-parties

Movies and TV series for example are still using DRM in the iTunes Store.

Wanna bet Apple would rather see those removed?

Technically minded people who would copy media between all sorts of devices can easily get this content, in many different ways, anyway. Apple makes a boatload of money thanks to the integrated experience they deliver with the iTunes Store, not because they are the sole providers of this content, because they are not. All DRMed media on the iTunes Store is available elsewhere, legally or not.

So all this DRM is good at is being an annoyance to Apple product users.

And if Apple can get rid of that annoyance, they do: never heard of iTunes Plus and its DRM-free format? Apple switched the entire iTunes Music Store to a non-DRM format as soon as the studios and labels agreed to it.

So, let’s be clear: the distributor, Apple, doesn’t impose the DRM, the content owner does. You can have your content distributed on the iTunes Music Store without DRM. Producers still don’t want to. Their fault.

The claims that iTunes users can’t enjoy the fine cultural piece that Twilight is because Apple loves DRM just doesn’t hold up. Apple does what it can, as we’ve seen with music, but you can’t expect all content providers, particularly the moguls of the cinema and tv industries to bend over easily. Since they are incapable of distributing digital content correctly, that’s the only way they have found to maintain an illusion of control. Blame them.

DRM in AppStore applications

As far as the AppStore goes, Apple has created the market and is the sole distributor. So they have a bigger stake in the whole thing, and they have made the choice to use DRM encryption on Applications.

Turns out this is a good thing for many reasons:

Easy access to applications

As a consumer, I have a one stop shop to get to the content (even though the AppStore is a bit messy). No one can set up a different store where I’d get applications from. There is no “source URL” to configure in my AppStore application. There is now “Where do you want to get Applications from?” question to answer. Good, there shouldn’t be. People want applications, they don’t want to make a choice about where to get them from.

Would you like to try and explain the concept of server to dozens of millions of people? People understand they can shop for groceries at one supermarket chain or another. Because they look different. On a computing device, we’d have the choice between having a separate application per store (well that sounds nice and easy to use…) or have one interface but ask the user “Where do you want to get Applications from?” (I can already hear the numerous “err… what the f*** does this mean?”)

I wonder how all the websites tracking the price changes on the AppStore would cope with multiple application distributors too. Let alone if any app could be hosted anywhere.

A better ecosystem

Only authorizing one store to distribute content means that there is no technical or functional complexity in managing content sources. How would you ensure the copy of Application X you’ve downloaded from some website hasn’t been modified to send your address book over to a not-so-privacy-conscious russian server? You couldn’t.

And this has even happened to big open source projects. Debian servers got hacked for example and modified packages were made available for everybody around the world to download unknowingly. Sure you could look at the contents of packages, it’s all wonderful open source content, but the point is when shit happens, you want to be able to limit the impact. The distributed Debian mirrors, under the control of many separate people, didn’t quite help in that respect.

Apple, as a business, can’t possibly afford that. Even if there was no direct financial impact and no one would sue them, their image as a trusted content distributor would suffer very very badly.

The agreements in place with carriers for the iPhone are also a pain. Misuse of the device can quickly turn into misuse of the network. As cool as it would be, you can’t allow bittorrent use on a cell network. And you can’t let anyone code an app that could send SMS by thousands. It’s been demonstrated already that jailbroken iPhones can be at risk of what is essentially a virus using the phone network. Centralising application distribution allows you to prevent this sort of stuff.

So if you distribute on the AppStore, you have to be identifiable, by consumers and by Apple, your Application gets a sanity check, and if approved but still fraudulent, one has to be able to pull the plug and make sure consumers can’t get it anymore.

It’s a pretty sane, and safe, ecosystem for the consumer.

No actual lockdown for developers

Further the market that was created was intended only for Apple devices. Therefore, nothing prohibits anyone from releasing their app on other platforms. Quite a few people have started publishing the same app on the Android Market, and even on gaming consoles.

If an App developer choses to only develop for the App Store, it’s his choice. Feel free to use someone elses software on another platform. Good on you for doing so.

No actual lockdown for consumers

Apple allows you to use apps on other devices, without re-purchasing them. Of course, this is only valid and useful for devices that can run these apps, meaning Apple devices.

If Samsung tomorrow allows you to create applications for its devices, does it mean you should by default be able to run those apps on a Sony camcorder?

And even if it could, it’d deliver a wonderfully shite user experience.

I can copy my music, applications and whatnot between Macs, from one iPhone to another and even to an iPad now. All this media and software can actually be run wherever it can physically run, without me having to re-purchase it.

Sure I can’t give it to a friend in a practical way. If it’s a free app, he can get it himself, and if it’s a paid app, he should buy it. Turns out software on the AppStore is ridiculously cheap and of much better quality than any other mobile software before.

In my mind: + 1 for developers, + 1 for consumers.

It’s all about the user

The implications of the Apple eco-system on software developers are either imaginary, or really needed for users.

There are a few things people could do with completely unrestricted software on Apple devices:

Share code to develop apps

Turns out you can. You couldn’t at the start and this was plain wrong. But now, you can. Place your app code under a BSD license if you want, it won’t pose a problem to anyone, including Apple.

Modify applications for myself

You can get the source code of an app placed under free software, modify it and having Apple re-distribute it. It’s a tedious process, but not impossible. But who does that? Geeks. The programming kind of geeks.

And DRM being a useless piece of crap for geeks, they quickly do away with it and you end up with Cydia, and apt running.

So in the end, the people who are interested in using this aspect of free software, can still do it on Apple’s evily closed devices. It’s not official, it’s not supported, but that’s really not a problem.

Have access to the OS and it’s GUI to hack it to pieces

Let me tell you my opinion as a consumer of those products, and not as a pure techie: I thank Apple with the deepest of my heart for creating an environment which remains coherent and I can actually see non-techies use. Our operating systems that we use day to day are utter complete pieces of crap when it comes to user experience. They’re freaking unusable. There’s always something that breaks, doesn’t work, hangs, behaves differently. It’s awful. It’s why we, the almighty “knowledgeables”, keep being called by family and friends to “fix their computers”, which don’t have any hardware problems but are just running awful awful software. Sometimes, someone has to actually be made responsible so that a consistent vision drives a project and a coherent product gets created. Well Apple is in the business of creating experiences and they don’t want people to mess around with these experiences.

Thank. Freaking. God.

I hate computers. Let me re-phrase: I loathe them. A small part of this comes from non-ubiquitous hardware. But really most of it comes from software. Software is there as the means to accomplish things. Get shit done. And from the moment it starts being about the software itself, from the moment every software you use has “Tools”, “Options”, “Preferences”, contextual menus, multiple toolbars, endless configuration etc. we the software developers, have massively failed.

If you don’t think this is fair, I have two things for you:

First: have you ever built a web application? You should try. It’s pretty complex work, you have to deal with a thousand different things and concerns, from data privacy to getting stuff to display correctly in all browsers. The most ubiquitous development platform we currently have is bloody hard to work with. Alright, so you have your web application done, it’s shiny, awesome and useful. Ok, now be a true open-platform hero: give server access to your users. Go wild, make it root access. Enjoy the madness.

This is what letting anyone code anything for a platform means. Some dude is going to code something awful, and it might well be downloaded hundreds of thousands of times by other users. He will in effect, by distributing a dodgy app, impact the experience of all other users. And that would be fine if those users knew what they were in for. But with a consumer market device like a phone or a tablet, people have no clue how things work. They’ve had computers for 30 years and most still can’t get it. We have come to the realisation that most people who use software will never understand what it is, and we therefore have to keep the experience to what they understand. To achieve this correctly, we have to limit what third-party software can do.

So how do you go about it if you need to give your users some level of customisability in your web application? Well you define what this means exactly, define clear formats in which they can do that, and lock the rest completely. In short: you define APIs on top of which third-parties will build clients, that third-parties will use. And the more closely you keep these APIs to the tasks users of your application are supposed to accomplish, the better for everybody. You will have kept your user experience as consistent as possible.

And so Apple has APIs that let people extend the experience of the core software by creating applications. But the rest, the operating system, is locked down and protected with DRM. Good. No one needs to temper with it. And that DRM, like all DRM, will get cracked anyway, and that’s fine, Apple knows that. In reality, that DRM doesn’t prevent techies from doing whatever they want with their devices. Anyone who has had Apache running on their iPhone knows that. But what it does is make it clear that Apple does not caution tempering with the experience powered by its software. They won’t let you add some toolbar or menu entry or some other artifact visible by users, if it is not done in a controlled, usable way.

As a user, I thank them so much. And as a geek, I have a jailbroken iPhone.

Second: go somewhere else. Just fuck off. For all I know, Apple hasn’t chained you to its machines with a Kensington lock. So use something else that truly makes you happy. There are pretty cool things out there already. I value the user experience and all round shinyness just as much as technical flexibility in products I buy and use frequently. If you’d rather be able to hack on anything you put your paws on, then just use whatever allows you to do that, and shut up. Apple doesn’t own the world. If their approach to consumer computing is truly a danger, like the Free Software Foundation thinks, don’t you worry things will balance themselves out and alternatives will rise up and bring choice first then real competition. Don’t hold your breathe for any totally open alternative that brings you the same level of consistency than Apple products do. It really is my hope that devices similar to the iPad but based on Android will show up in the coming two years. It is also my belief that, from a UX point of view, they will suck balls. Pretty big balls at that. But hey, in the end, each to their own.

In conclusion

I love closed systems, for two reasons:

  • they give the freedom to the one creating them to truly control the experience the system will deliver to its users.
  • nothing is truly closed, DRM is lame and therefore formats layered with it are not really closed, people who don’t want the restrictions of DRM quickly find a way to circumvent them. And formats are really what matters.

DRM is a joke, get over it. The world is actually a better place with than without Apple. I’ll enjoy my iPad.

New blog engine

written by Cyril, on Jul 30, 2009 5:05:00 PM.

I have switched this blog over to Zine.

I had stopped writing before as rolling out my own proper blogging engine with theming etc was taking too much time. And then along came Zine in all its awesomeness :) I will still spend a bit of time on a theme though.

I shall rant again here soon…

Project Fondue Favicon Generator Launched

written by Cyril, on Feb 10, 2009 10:00:00 AM.

Today Project Fondue (Ed Eliot, Stuart Colville and I) is launching a new tool to create and edit favicons: the Favicon Generator.

Generating .ico files can be a bit of a pain and the Favicon Generator makes this very easy. Another great feature it provides is the ability to tweak the icons or create new ones with an editor.

The Favicon Generator is one of several projects in the works at Project Fondue.

Contract and a New Adventure in France

written by Cyril, on Jan 26, 2009 10:00:00 AM.

So I left Yahoo! in December. This was a big change, and like anyone else I wasn’t totally happy to leave the Great Webdev Nation of Yahoo! London. This being said, change is good, and new stuff is now keeping me busy.

I’m currently contracting here in London, doing PHP stuff. It’s kindof good to focus on one and only site for work purposes, working with one codebase means you don’t have to re-become used to it every second day.

I’m also doing Django/Python and generally webdev related stuff on the side more than ever. I’m working with a few friends on a lot of cool little projects, which we’ll be launching over the coming weeks.

And I am also starting to plan my move to Paris which will occur in March. This is very exciting, and many more projects and adventures will take place as a result of this move.

2009 is shaping up to be a great year, hopefully as great as 2008 was!

Kthxbai Y!

written by Cyril, on Dec 8, 2008 10:00:00 AM.

So today is my last day working cleaning my desk at Yahoo!

I feel both really happy since I asked to leave, and at the same time very disappointed. Yahoo! is a company for which I’d be happy to work for for a very long time, but right now my priorities, where I want to take my professional life and what I want to do with my time are just not aligned with the company’s plans.

I don’t have any regret at all, it has been an experience that I would recommend to anyone. I got to work with many talented and just all round great guys, learnt a lot and had more good times than I can remember. To all those I shared the office with: thank you very much, you’ve made my life in London much better than I could imagine when I moved here almost two years ago.

I will now stay in London for a few more months before probably moving on to France at some point next year. This is the perfect opportunity to concentrate on doing what I really like, playing with the technology I find the most appropriate for what I want to do and make progress (finally) on a handful of side projects (including this site and the software powering it).

So I’m disappointed I’m not staying at Yahoo! to do cool stuff but I’m also happy. I really believe change in my life is a good thing and I can only learn from all these experiences.

On a more technical level I’ll keep doing web stuff of course, write a lot more Python, put out Django based sites, and play with many APIs. First thing will be Last.fm’s hackday, for which I have a neat little idea :)

Enrichissement De Sites Web: Présentation à Paris Web 2008

written by Cyril, on Nov 20, 2008 10:00:00 AM.

Voici les slides de ma présentation intitulée “Enrichissement de sites web” à la journée des ateliers de Paris Web 2008.

Paris Web 2008: Wow!

written by Cyril, on Nov 17, 2008 10:00:00 AM.

I’ll write this in both French and English. English first. Je commence par la version Anglaise de ce billet, rendez-vous plus bas pour le billet en français. English: Holy cow, I knew Paris Web was great, but not that great. It basically was close to everything I would like a web conference to be. I had the privilege to be invited to speak and gave a technical-ish presentation on progressive enhancement at the EFREI on Saturday, the day dedicated to workshops. I am now even more convinced than before: I don’t need to be invited to Paris Web, I’ll be there at the next one, even if I happily have to pay more than 100€s (!) for the conference days and, get ready, 10€s for the workshops.

There are two big things I’m particularly happy about: the quality and professionalism of the french community, and the people.

I knew there was a vibrant french community in some specialised areas of the web industry: the Mozilla guys are quite a few and passionate; the CSS Working group co-chair and unavoidable Daniel Glazman is there; there are a few high-quality open source CMS/blog engines being developed (Spip & Dotclear for example); I had heard a bit about some of the bigger companies (eg. France Telecom & Skyrock, a big radio network) doing lots of web stuff and hiring good people, and I had visited the sites of a few freelancers (such as Marie Destandeau’s Ototoi, much to her surprise). Oh, and I knew about the Temesis guys of course, who are the uncontestable masters of web quality assessment.

But to put it simply, I am still gobsmacked by how good these and many more people I have discovered and met at Paris Web are. I had a few doubts to be honest on whether or not there was an actually big enough community of really good web people back home, as good as some of the guys I’ve met in the UK and sometimes the US. Well, there is no reason left to doubt. They’re just as good, professional and dedicated as the best guys I was really glad to get to know in the UK. This is obviously not a competition, it’s just reassuring to know there is a not-too-small group of people who are well positioned to make the web in France evolve in the right direction: to be standards driven and user centric.

And it just so happens that these are really freaking nice people too. As Marie was saying, it’s really good to see most people present, and this includes first and foremost the organisers, are just genuinely nice folks. It was also good to see some of the people I knew of and thought may be a bit too forceful or argumentative in real life are not. I seriously haven’t met any wanker there, from the organisers to the famous-ish designers to the standards and browser guys. And for the best web conference in a 60 million + people country which happens to have the reputation of being the most arrogant in the world, it’s either a feat, or a huge mistake on the part of people generalising from the outside.

Anyway, I’m just really happy right now, had an awesome four days, and really looking forward to Paris Web 2009. Thank you to all the (volunteer, it’s worth mentioning) organisers, you’ve done an awesome job. Français: Bon, alors, je ne vais pas traduire exactement la version anglaise, on va la faire un peu plus court: c’eacute;tait énorme! J’avais entendu du bien de Paris Web avant de venir, mais j’avais râté lédition de l’année derniègrave;re et donc savait pas entièrement à quoi m’attendre. Paris Web 2008 était très proche de ma conf7eacute;rence web idéale. Je reviendrai l’année prochaine, sans aucun doute, même sans être invité comme c’&eacute’tait le cas cette année, et je serai m&eacirc;me bien content de payer plus que les maigres prix des billets cette année (sérieusement, 100€s les conférences et 10€s les ateliers, c’est presque pas sérieux…).

J’en tirerai deux choses de cette édition: la qualité et le professionalisme de la communauté web française, et les gens que j’ai pu rencontrer ou découvrir.

Je savais qu’il y avais une communauté importante dans certains domaines: les gars de Mozilla; Daniel L’Icontournable; les gens qui bossent sur quelques CMS ou moteurs de blogs (Spip et Dotclear par exemple); quelques grosses companies comme FT ou Skyrock qui ont embauché pas mal de monde; et quelques freelance tels que Marie Destandeau.

Mais franchement, je suis toujours épaté par la qualité professionelle de ces gens et des autres que j’ai rencontré à Paris Web. J’avais quelques doutes pour être honnête sur le fait qu’il y ait une communauté active de gens qui savent vraiment ce qu’ils font sur le web assez grande en France. Je savais qu’il y en avait, mais pas combien et ce qu’ils faisaient exactement. C’est pas évident de l’extérieur de s’en rendre compte, on ne peut pas forcément suivre tous les blogs du monde… Et bah maintenant le doute est plus que levé Il y a un groupe bien important de personnes en France qui sont tout aussi bons, professionels et «dédiés à la cause» que les gars que j’ai pu rencontrer au Royaume Uni ou parfois aux US. C’est pas une compèt’ de toute façon, mais bons ça fait vraiment plaisir de savoir qu’il y a un nombre assez important de gens en France qui sont là pour pouvoir fair avancer le web dans la bonne direction: le rendre basé sur les standards et centré sur l’utilisateur.

Et il se trouve que tous ces gens sont non seulement très pro, mais aussi super sympa. J’ai vraiment pas rencontré de connard, des organisateurs à ceux qui sont un peu connu dans le milieu, aux gars des standards ou navigateurs. Avec la réputation qu’on se tape d’être arrogants, on pourrait s’attendre que la plus importante conférence web (oui, je compte pas Le Web, je m’intéresse pas particulièrement au web comme support marketing) dans le pays ne soit pas désuée d’abbrutis, et bah soit je les ai heureusement évités, soit notre réputation est vraiment pas si méritée que ça :)

Voilà, je suis super content, j’ai passé quatre jours fabuleux, et suis très impatient d’être à Paris Web 2009. Merci énormément à tous les organisateurs (bénévoles, il faut le dire quand même), vous avez fait un boulot remarquable. Bon, en fait c’était assez long ce billet, j’ai pas pu me retenir, désolé, j’suis content… :)

WSG Findability Presentations

written by Cyril, on Jun 3, 2008 10:00:00 AM.

I presented at the latest Web Standards Group event in London, which was about findability this time around.

The slides of my talk “Introduction to Findabililty” are up on Slideshare and viewable below:

I might knock up an article on the topic and put it up here at some point…

The evening was great and we got good feedback which was really good, considering we didn’t really know how the topic would be received (I was particularly worried about my presentation which was completely void of any technical stuff).

I’m really looking forward to the next WSG gathering (for which I already have many ideas…). Thanks again to Stuart for putting these events together!