The assignment of this master's thesis has been to evaluate the feasibility
of developing a Digital Rights Management (DRM) system for mobile software
products and, if feasible, present a working design and prototype of such a
system. The DRM system had to be based on the existing Lime software DRM
system for desktop software products, designed using UML and run on
the .NET Compact Framework.
The work during the master's thesis was done in a software engineering
project. The project began with a research phase, giving the knowledge
required to develop a DRM system for mobile software products. In order to
be able to evaluate the feasibility of developing a DRM system for mobile
software products, the newly acquired knowledge was used to execute a
feasibility study. The study resulted in four deliverables: Project Plan,
Requirements Specification, Time and Resource Plan and Software Quality
Assurance Plan. The deliverables define the project, analyze the market,
identify problems, determine requirements, provide a development plan and
give quality guidelines. A decision to go ahead with the project and create
a design and prototype of a DRM system for mobile software products running
on Pocket PC devices, the Lime Mobile Pocket PC software DRM system, was
taken when the feasibility study had been evaluated.
Basing a DRM system for mobile software products on the Lime software DRM
system proved to be a difficult task. There are many differences between a
mobile device and a desktop computer. Furthermore, the available version of
the Lime software DRM system was a rough prototype. In the end, the Lime
Mobile Pocket PC software DRM system was designed to use the base of the
Lime software DRM system but the high level functionality was re-designed
from scratch.
Due to the poor internet connectivity of mobile devices, the Lime Mobile
Pocket PC software DRM system was designed to be dependent on desktop
computers during licensing operations. In order to be truly mobile, the DRM
system should be re-designed to be completely client-centric in the future
if the internet connectivity of mobile devices increases.
The implementation and testing of ...
