Darran/James: > 2.) I agree, since GIMP is included with Solaris/OpenSolaris, though > most people don't work in RAW, let alone does most cameras for users > have RAW image support, but nonetheless this is a reasonable request and > I think another RFE is in order if you think it would be beneficial > without too much work involved to make it happen.
dcraw was ARC'ed as LSARC 2008/058. This isn't UFRaw, but I believe it provides some functionalities useful for importing camera RAW formats. /usr/bin/dcraw seems to be already installed on Solaris Nevada build 86. > 3.) Their website doesn't take into account the GPL linking pollution > with patented software, Sun cannot risk such a thing until every > gstreamer backend has an exception if it is regular GPLv2 (LGPL, MIT, > BSD do not have this problem) Note that Java Media Player and RealPlayer support MP3 audio. So there are other audio programs on Solaris which do support MP3 out-of-the-box. The problem is just with GStreamer. Rhythmbox does support MP3 if you have the GStreamer plugin installed. However, since Rhythmbox is under the GPL license it cannot be distributed with a non-GPL compatible GStreamer plugin. The MP3 plugin is non-GPL compatible because it isn't free, you must pay a licensing fee to use it. Note that there is no GPL violation with end-users separately installing non-GPL compatible plugins and using them with GPL programs like rhythmbox. You just can not distribute the two together. So, you can download the MP3 plugin for no charge from the Fluendo webstore, and use it legally. It is no-charge because Fluendo purchased an unlimited use license and they are kind enough to provide the plugin to Linux and Solaris users without passing the cost to the end-user. https://shop.fluendo.com They do charge for their WindowsMedia Audio and Video plugins. They aren't too expensive, and they do make Solaris work with these popular media formats. Which is nice. Regarding DVD playback: Historically Sun has not pursued getting licenses needed for playing DVD's. Also note that most DVD's are encoded in media formats like MPEG-2 which require additional licenses. Obviously Sun could decide to acquire such licensing at any time, but I am not aware of any such plans. I am currently working with Fluendo to try and make available legal Solaris MPEG-2, MPEG-4 and AC-3 codecs. If this happens, this gets Solaris one step closer to supporting DVD's (unencrypted ones at least). There are some 3rd parties which seem interested in providing a legal DVD Player for Solaris, such as Fluendo. However, I do not believe any such players are available at the moment. So I don't believe there are any legal solutions I can recommend. > MP3 is > forthcoming, Sun pays for royalties, it's a GPL linking issue with > gstreamer backends which are dangerous to have lingering for combination > of any gstreamer backend GPL licensed with non-GPL causes pollution and > causes pain. It is hard to say how long it will take to resolve this issue. I am currently working with the various GStreamer projects to add licensing exceptions so that non-GPL compatible GStreamer plugins can be distributed with applications such as rhythmbox. Our hope is that we can work with the community to resolve these issues and ship a MP3 plugin with GStreamer in the future. In the meantime, downloading and using the Fluendo MP3 plugin is the best solution. > (Note, IMHO, its quality seriously sucks, it > lags badly for no reason) I have never noticed the Fluendo MP3 codec having lagging issues. Are you using Sparc or x86? Sun used to ship a GStreamer MP3 plugin. Did you also notice lagging issues with that plugin? I would expect both plugins to have the same issues since they are built using the same code and spec-files. Brian
