Include MPlayer in beta?

Jef Spaleta jspaleta at princeton.edu
Tue Sep 2 18:29:42 UTC 2003


Alan Cox wrote:
> Ogg has solved the audio problem. There is great potential for it to 
> solve the video problem in time.

But in time for what? That seems to be the real question. A lot of
people seem to take a very naive position on how to get from here to a
viable linux desktop. If only we can reimplement existing technologies,
is what I hear when I see people clamoring for mplayer to be in the
distro. A lot of people seem to think reimplementing the ability to
access these proprietary technologies is the shortcut to desktop
domination. As soon as we get one layer of technology reversed
engineered they'll just patent another layer of technology, and possibly
a strongly layer of legal protections to keep us out. Without an
alternative in place...its a a big treadmill of wasted development
effort tryng to keep up.

I was trying to be subtle with my nod to xiph.  No point in repeating my
rant on this issue from the last beta phase, but it's so hard to resist.
I firmly believe its critically important that we...we as in userbase,
and not just the developers...make it a point to encourage the adoption
of open standards even in multimedia codecs. Having quicktime and
windows media playing on our linux desktop in the short term might seem
like a victory and a step towards mainstream linux desktops in the home.
But I see it as long term defeat towards a viable open source desktop
alternative. Open source solutions can not base core functionality on
proprietary technology. Hell even MS and Apple don't rely on technology
they can not control, they each have their own competing content
formats. It would make little sense for MS to rely on quicktime for its
multimedia...just as it would make little since for any open source
product to rely on windows media technology to provide the multimedia
functionality...technology essentially out of control of the open source
development community.

The real solution is putting effort behind what xiph is doing with its
ogg framework. So that we can give the content producers a viable open
alternative to produce content in. I'd much rather see the effort being
burned now to get access to the 'most common' proprietary formats, being
used to move the ogg theora effort out of alpha and into beta. I wish
typical linux desktop users, understood this need a little better than
they seem to.  

-jef
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://listman.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/attachments/20030902/1fe9b3f1/attachment.sig>


More information about the fedora-test-list mailing list