hplip: hp-toolbox advertising?

[Rahul Sundaram]

Bernard Johnson wrote:
> Jesse Keating wrote:
>> On Tuesday 27 March 2007 16:16:59 Bernard Johnson wrote:
>>> Are we ok with letting CodecBuddy direct users to the Fluendo webstore?
>>>  Are there going to be providions for equal access for other vendors?
>> I personally had thought that codecbuddy was going to drive users to a 
>> fedoraproject.org page which would give more information and list possible 
>> vendors for the codec.  If Fluendo is the only possible vendor, that's fine, 
>> but we would own the page that codecbuddy drives to and thus own the content 
>> listed and could add/remove vendors at our will.  Is that not the case? 
> 
> Unfortunately, I don't think there is enough in rawhide to preview. You
> might be right (and your description would probably work great and be
> fair), but...
> 
> My assumption was based on
> http://hadessuk.blogspot.com/2007/03/totem-news.html
> 
> In this screenshot, it looks like the application is pulling the
> information directly from the Fluendo webshop (their description, their
> price).


The way UI works on the codec buddy is described in the blog is not what 
will be ultimately in Fedora.  I brought this up on Fedora Board meeting 
today. Here is how it is expected to work.

  * When the user clicks a mp3 file, instead of missing codec errors 
there will be a popup where the user can either choose to learn about 
Free (in both ways) alternatives or click to install the free codec 
supplied by Fluendo (Fleundo  has the necessary patent licenses so this 
is a legal in US) which is under a MIT X11 license or cancel the whole 
thing.  The user experience here is very similar to what happens when 
you visit a website which needs Flash plugin the first time in Firefox 
except that in addition we would explain to them that there are better 
Free alternatives and the reason why we don't provide these codecs by 
default in Fedora. This way we get to keep Fedora entirely Free and open 
source software while solving the usability issue of not being able to 
play some of the content to a good extend (wont be very helpful folks 
who dont network access so it is not 100% solved yet).

* For the other paid as well as proprietary codecs, the user would be 
directed to a Fedora Project page where they can again learn about 
better Free alternatives. In the page we would also list Fluendo as a 
vendor providing licensed and paid proprietary codecs. If there are 
vendors who are involved we can very well list them. So there is a level 
playing field here.

Comments?

Rahul