Ruckus: 'open up that platform'

My Way Finance: "Jobs 'could open that platform up tomorrow if he really wanted to,' insisted Mike Bebel, chief executive of Ruckus Networks, a Herndon, Va., service that offers more than 2.5 million DRM-protected song titles to college students. 'It's great PR (for Jobs) and a nice way to turn the tables, but it's not really working toward a solution.'"

Mr. Bebel: Can you "open up" your "platform tomorrow"? It would be really nice to access the Ruckus service and all of its content on my Mac OS X system. And I bet some college students running Linux would appreciate it as well. Oh. Wait. That's right - Windows Media DRM - where "open" means "as long as you have a license for Windows OS." Unfortunately, "Plays For Sure" always means "Not On Mac!"

At least Steve Jobs has taken a stance against DRM, and the DRM his store offers works on the top two desktop OS platforms in the world, and the top selling brand of MP3 players in the world. And it easily lets people burn songs to a CD which is completely unencumbered and DRM-free.

Microsoft's Windows Media won't even consider offering a "Desktop DRM" license for any product that doesn't run on Windows. Linspire and Flip4Mac both want such licenses but have been turned down. Again - "open" would imply "available to all parties at a similar price and on similar terms."