James: Now that is a great explanation of the situation, I think. If you can make it through that dense paragraph, that is. :)
> Totem uses the gstreamer backend and is a native GNOME application, > while mplayer and xine are thorny issues for legal reasons in many > cases. Any GPL based application without an exception to allow you to link in non-free media codec has GPL license issues with distribution. Most GStreamer based GPL applications have such a license exception, while Mplayer, Xine, Ogle, etc. do not, making them harder to distribute with interesting media support enabled, even if you have license to the media codec itself. > Sun's accessibility, > marketing, legal and usability teams are reasons Totem have been > selected. Many Linux distributions continue to provide Totem, and > Totem's supposedly lacking attributes are due to lack of inclusion of > patented gstreamer codecs. The Fluendo service provides licensed > gstreamer codecs. I wouldn't say totem's UI is perfect. However, it's getting better all the time. > For business adoption, inclusion of Xine and MPlayer > are not an option. They could be an option, if the business wanted to negotiate licenses for needed plugins, and if they had no plans to distribute the code. However, most businesses would find negotiating such licenses cumbersome. Though Fluendo is offering more and more legal codecs for sale, making this less and less of an issue. Hopefully other 3rd parties may also make available more legal solutions for non-free media on Solaris and Linux in the future. For example, if you own an iPod, then tell Apple how important it is to port iTunes to Solaris. :) Brian
