James: > Why would a user pay $100 USD for a package of codecs anyway? It's just > ironic these "free" systems are no better off than the closed ones, sure > it's the proprietary mentality that caused it, but Sun knows how to > manage both, so get with the times. For something so ubiquitous to be > taken away because of potential fear is just pathetic, and so far has > vastly reduced the adoption of non-Windows/Mac systems.
Fluendo currently sells their complete set of codecs for 28 euro (or $36) for Linux. Although they do not yet have MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 codecs for Solaris, I think its reasonable to anticipate their Solaris pricing will be similar when they are available. That's quite a bit less than $100. That said, I would applaud Sun if they were to offer similar licensed codecs directly to end users, hopefully at a competitive cost with Fluendo's pricing. > In this economy, you can't honestly expect individuals who are already > apprehensive about another "Linux-like" operating system to invest into > becoming legitimate. Most US users will break the law, and so far > enforcements against users specifically cannot be made with ease and > efficiency, which is why Sun maintains the ignorant non-knowing stance > all the while community members off the thread point people at MPlayer > or VLC. > > For transparency, completely ignoring the legal hurtles, using either > mplayer or vlc does not fit into the graphical desktop mass adoption web > centric usage point of most individuals, even engineers and system > administrators (Especially them actually, do you think they are always > working and not using youtube and rich content?) It is important to provide legitimate licensed codecs to customers since most larger customers and businesses with media needs would obviously require legitimate solutions. Also, I do not think it is helpful to speculate that "most U.S. users" as people who "will break the law." Who can really know that? I suspect there are many users who would also prefer to use legitimate technologies. The biggest problem at the moment is that there aren't yet legitimate solutions available for many media needs, such as playing encrypted DVD's. Hopefully, as such problems are solved, the issues will become less pressing. The main difficulty with programs like mplayer and VLC is that their licensing isn't friendly for distribution. Such programs use the GPL which simply doesn't allow you to distribute them with non-free support built in. This doesn't cause a problem for end users who just build the code, but nobody can distribute a program like mplayer or VLC with non-free media support without violating the terms of the GPL. Since mplayer and VLC do not support a plugin infrastructure it is also not possible to deliver media plugins separately, avoiding the GPL restriction that they cannot be distributed together. Perhaps the maintainers of such projects might address this problem by relicensing their code under different licensing, or by adopting a more plugin-based infrastructure for media support. Most GStreamer based programs, address this problem. GStreamer based programs, for example, are GPL with a license exception which allows distribution with non-free GStreamer plugins. This makes GStreamer a more suitable platform for delivering non-free media support to end users. Brian
