On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 5:00 PM, Jon 'maddog' Hall <mad...@li.org> wrote: >>Not one Linux distro I've seen does a convincing job with consumer >>media, an absolutely basic requirement, and something we ought to be >>able to get right. > > Well, please ask the DVD people not to used royalty bearing patents in > their codecs, and encryption practices ...
Again, explaining why it is a hard problem does nothing to reduce the problem. We can bitch and moan about the copyright cartels all we want, but the end-user is still unable to play DVDs on Linux, and that's still a reason "Linux sucks". This is an area where Linux is *really* disadvantaged. A lot of problems are purely technological. Apply some time and "enough eyeballs", as ESR says, and the FOSS community will likely solve them. The problem with "consumer media" is mostly political/legal/economic, not technical. There's a huge amount of money being spent to ensure that a small number of large companies continue to wield control of the field. They're willing to spend that money because they are protecting an even huger amount of money. Linux can provide code, but it can't provide legality. Nominally, the solution is to change the law -- write your congressperson, that sort of thing. But again, lots of money is being spent to keep things the way they are. Mass public outcry is required, and getting that looks to be difficult. People are conditioned to be "consumers", to pay for everything. "Intellectual property" law is notoriously poorly understood by most people. I work at company where "intellectual property" is a key part of the material being manufactured, and people who really should know better are regularly surprised by how this stuff works (especially that works are copyright at their inception, no registration or notification required). So people don't even know there is a problem, don't understand the problem when it is explained, and just don't seem to care that much. Again, I don't have a good answer, but that doesn't mean the problem goes away. "Linux still sucks". -- Ben _______________________________________________ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/