free formats, CodecBuddy, and how you can help

[Karsten Wade]

As part of our ongoing campaign in Fedora to support and promote
free/open formats for media, Fedora 8 has a new feature called 'codeina'
that is part of the GStreamer package.  There is a proposed patch to
codeina to change certain default behavior,

The effect is, when a user attempts to play a format that is not
supported due to a codec being non-free or otherwise patent encumbered,
a dialog window pops up.  This window informs the user of what is
happening and links off to a webpage for more information:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/attachment.cgi?id=221531

(Note - the typo 'availabe' has been fixed.  You may be able to get
changes to this dialog into the patch if you act quickly.)

The dialog has a link to fedoraproject.org/codecbuddy, which redirects
to a wiki page.  Your help is needed in crafting this message the users
see:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/CodecBuddy

That webpage can have:

* More information
* Links to more information (such as the ForbiddenItems page)
* Links to where one can legally purchase codecs (through Fluendo)

All of this replaces the default codeina behavior, which is to take the
user directly to Fluendo's online shop.  The Fedora Board felt that it
is OK to offer such options as part of a full story, but not as a
default action without context as to *why* this is happening.

The codeina maintainer would like to see the webpage/wiki page updated
before accepting the patch.

If you are interested, just jump in and start editing the CodecBuddy
page.  Hopefully someone with more information about the Fluendo
portions can help with that.

thx - Karsten
-- 
Karsten Wade, Developer Community Mgr.
Dev Fu : http://developer.redhatmagazine.com
Fedora : http://quaid.fedorapeople.org
gpg key : AD0E0C41
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