The difference, as I understand it, is that the "good" media players allow plug-in protocols -- I believe that even Windows Media Player will play Ogg Vorbis files, if the codec is installed. If the proper codec is installed, on windows, just about any media player can use it, iirc. Same goes for linux: mplayer, xine, xmms, and others all have a mechanism for allowing extension to the supported media formats... whereas realplayer is a closed-source (afaik, although I think they did release source for one or more of their linux products in the past, maybe the producer??) player that only support the built-in media formats. Also, so far as I know, Real's formats are not playable on linux without Real's software. If true, this is a closed format, which is more or less, a Bad Thing. Humm, don't know if that is fully true: a quick google search brought up this mailing list message: https://listman.redhat.com/pipermail/valhalla-list/2002-July/008749.html which seems to indicate that mplayer was capable (in the CVS code anyway, don't know if it got into the release) of handling Real format when properly configured and compiled (via Real's own DLLs I think)... Wow, I just checked MPlayer's home page and it looks like they support RealAudio/Video up to version 9, in the latest version. It does indeed use the Win32 DLL, here is the homepage: http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/design5/news.html
So there *is* a less-evil option, but if you want to use the truly Free player, you still have to rely on (and allow!) some non-free code onto your system (the DLL). The DLL is designed for Windows, so one would hope that it would not make any malicious linux kernel calls... but I guess it could have malicious machine-level code for x86. Hopefully not. ciao, Ben B PS - moral of the story: Don't confuse your applications (viewers, in this case) with your document formats (codecs). On Wed, 2003-04-02 at 16:40, Ben Huot wrote: > I'm glad they did put it in RealPlayer format - how many people have an > Ogg Vorbis player and why should they half to download yet another > program for multimedia. There is already Windows Media Player, > Quicktime, Realplayer, Flash, Java, etc. > > Ken Barber wrote: > > On Wednesday 02 April 2003 15:06, Bob Miller wrote: > > > >>>From: Ken Barber <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > >>>Subject: [laneopensource] HB 2892 - history in the making > >>> > >>>[...] You will need RealPlayer installed on your computer for > >>>this to work. > >> > >>The irony is delicious. (-: > > > > > > In the draft of the bill that I sent to Rep. Barnhart, there was a > > clause that would have required the State to use open-standard > > formats in all public documents available for electronic download > > -- which would probably require them, in the future, to make > > these things available in Ogg. Unfortunately, that was removed > > before the bill was sent to Legislative Counsel for its final > > draft. > > > > Ken -- Ben Barrett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> counterclaim _______________________________________________ Eug-LUG mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mailman.efn.org/cgi-bin/listinfo/eug-lug
