Multimedia support [Was: Release8 reportinstallation]

[James Gregory]

On Fri, 2004-09-10 at 09:07 +0200, Martin Pitt wrote:
> Hi Jeff!
> 
> On 2004-09-10 16:57 +1000, Jeff Waugh wrote:
> > > how can it be that this totem thingy refuses to play even the simplest
> > > MPEG-2 movie?
> >  - we can't ship xine due to patent encumberances
> >  - we can't ship a number of gstreamer plugins due to patent encumberances
> >  - playing even the simplest MPEG-2 movie requires serious patent licensing
> >    insanity
> 
> Of course, you are right. If I see a lawyer today, I will... Never
> mind.
> 
> Any idea how we can tell the user about that? Many users will not know
> about these patent issues, a friend of mine happily uses his Win Media
> Player and always bitches about "that Linux that cannot play my
> movies". I told him about that patent crap and he understood, but
> still there should be a prominent place that explains this. Maybe a
> dialog box if the application is started the first time? This could
> also point to more capable alternatives.

Is there a way to get it to play these things? I don't know what the
legal repurcussions would be, but the user would be better served by
being informed of how to play their patent-encumbered media file;
irrespsective of whether we can ship with this stuff. Free alternatives
won't help people do what they want to do in the common case.

James.

-- 
James Gregory <james at james.id.au>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
Url : http://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/sounder/attachments/20040910/7d18c1fd/attachment.pgp