Corporate pressure

[Mike A. Harris]

On Sat, 7 Feb 2004, Peter Backlund wrote:

>> Shipping software which is open source but which enables the use
>> of proprietary plugins easily and is not very useful without 
>> those proprietary plugins, does not exactly promote "a general 
>> purpose operating system exclusively from open source software", 
>> and so that idea would completely go against the stated goals of 
>> the Fedora Project.
>
>The Helix Player has the capabilities to play MP3, MPEG-4, AMR 
>(narrowband codec), Ogg Vorbis and H.263 in the OSI-approved parts of 
>the code base. So I wouldn't exactly call it useless without the RA/RV 
>plugins. But sure, the thing that distinguishes it from other media 
>players is of course RA/RV.

The majority of the codecs to play the above formats, are either 
proprietary, or are IP encumbered, including MP3, MPEG-4 and 
others.  Ogg Vorbis is the only one I recognize above which is 
truely free.  We don't need Helix player to play Ogg vorbis, 
I've been using ogg for a few years now and have never installed 
Helix player personally.  I've also used several of the other 
formats without using Helix.


>> I for one would oppose the inclusion of any proprietary software
>> into the Fedora Core or Extras, or any software (open source or
>> otherwise) which exists purely to enable layering of proprietary
>> software or plugins on top of that.
>> 
>> That doesn't stop people from going and downloading the stuff 
>> anyway if they want to use it.  Please don't try to change the 
>> project's mandated goals.
>
>Point taken. Perhaps the Helix Player should go entirely into a
>repository outside of Fedora Core/Extras. It might be a bit more
>difficult to get permission to host RA/RV, but certainly not
>impossible.

www.livna.org perhaps would be best.


-- 
Mike A. Harris     ftp://people.redhat.com/mharris
OS Systems Engineer - XFree86 maintainer - Red Hat