Re: [GnomeMeeting-devel-list] Gnomemeeting's future

[Craig Southeren <craigs postincrement com>]

On Thu, 10 Feb 2005 00:03:45 +0100
"Kilian Krause" <kk verfaction de> wrote:

> Hi Craig,
> 
> > For example, Digium sells a G.729 codec license for Asterisk that is
> > locked into the MAC address of the network cards. If you change your
> > network cards, you need a new license, and they will only let you do
> > that ONCE before you have to buy a new one.
> 
> there was entire sets of NICs sold with identical MAC addresses in the
> past. I can change my MAC from system software on any decent OS, so
> what's the *real* challenge of providing the matching MAC for the
> license? (ok, my DHCP might go freaky) 

My apologies - I wasn't offering the Asterisk solution as a way to solve
the problem, merely pointing out an example of how another project has
chosen to meet the terms of a similar license. I am fully aware that it
is easy to change the MAC address on some network cards (although it is
not as easy as some would have you believe).

And, by the way, if you have duplicate MAC addresses on your network,
you will have far worse problems than your DHCP not working as expected.
On an Ethernet network, the MAC address is the link level address for
the node - if you have duplicate addresses then there will be confusion
as where packets for the MAC address should be delivered to. Different
nodes will end up with different ARP entries for the same IP address and
chaos will ensue. 
 
> At least for now i haven't found an answer that convinced me there is a
> working DRM out there. (and i don't demand this answer to be found in
> this thread - just making sure)

To be sure, DRM is a difficult problem to solve, especially when using
Open Source software :)

   Craig

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