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Dolby Tells NetBSD Project: Don't Decode AC3

Mycroft writes: "There's a new entrant into the open source DVD legal battle: Dolby Laboratories. The NetBSD Project received this letter demanding that links to the open source ac3dec package be removed. What's next?" Probably what's next are yet more letters sent to every other project which enables decoding of content on platforms unsupported by the format licensors. Remember, you don't buy anything anymore -- you license it.

15 of 499 comments (clear)

  1. The Simple Answer by sPaKr · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    You can get my code when you pry it from my cold dead hand.

  2. Down with MS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    There is only one way to bring down MS, and its not making Linux/BSD work with MS-systems or making Linux/BSD a Superior OS, people are familiar and comfortable with Windows, and this is what maintians there monopoly. Linux/BSD is a hobby OS. You have to target MS where it hurts, and thats their developers/coders. Without them MS and there shit OS's cease to exist. Somehow, someway, we have to stop developers from getting jobs at Microsoft and working for the company. That is the only way.. no developers, no code, no company!

  3. Why do we care? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Moderate this, go ahead... Its not trolling. Sometimes when you get two intellectuals together they fight for long periods of time on a solution. The solution in this scenerio and others are rather simple. They cannot stop OpenSource movements, sure they can enforce RedHat or established companies, but they cannot stop me from developing code. Considering that NetBSD/FreeBSD/Linux etc, is so widely used and dependant on current technologies, they can't shutdown operations even if they could. All you people that think your smart, shut the hell up, here's the most practical solution: Fuck Dolby Move on, continue work, and submit it to ports. The beauty of opensource projects, is that they can't point the finger at anyone, but everyone which is a big difference.

  4. Where Are They Now? by SomeoneGotMyNick · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    I was wondering what Thomas Dolby was up to.....?

  5. Re:What's the problem? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    tie you up!

  6. Re:This is why licensing should stop. by bnenning · · Score: 2, Offtopic
    Since the government wouldn't interfere, anyone would be able to practice medicine. There goes your freedom from pertinent information about such situations.

    Just because the government doesn't regulate something doesn't mean you have to go in blind. The computer industry is largely unregulated but there are plenty of sources offering reviews and certifications.

    Public schools, public roads, federally inspected food and drugs, career licensing (doctors, lawyers, hairdressers, etc.) are all socialistic in nature.

    Yes, and none of the work very well. Private schools consistently outperform public schools while spending less money, privately owned roads cost less and are better maintained, and FDA delays in approving drugs have resulted in thousands of deaths. Capitalism isn't perfect, but it's usually better than the alternatives.

    --
    How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
  7. Re:This is why licensing should stop. by Coz · · Score: 4, Offtopic
    Private schools can cherry-pick their students, and can discriminate on a number of bases; privately owned roads are impossible to find in rural areas, apart from privately owned lands (How do we get to the next town? Through them thar woods, boys!); and the FDA has saved hundreds of thousands of lives by making people test drugs, and ordering the withdrawal of bad ones from the market.

    It ain't perfect, but it's a darn sight better than not having anything.

    --
    I love vegetarians - some of my favorite foods are vegetarians.
  8. Re:Lunch by Mr.+Slippery · · Score: 3, Offtopic
    There can be no such thing as 'pure capitalism' if by that you mean a truly free market.

    "Capitalism" and "free markets" are not the same thing.

    The opposite of capitalism - in which a minority of people (the capitalists), backed by state force[1], control "the means of production" - is socialism, in which "the workers" or "the people" control the means of production.

    The opposite of a free market system (where production is determined by market forces) is a command economy (where production is determined by government fiat).

    There can be capitalist command economies (the US during the Depression and WWII would be close to this) and socialist free markets (don't know of any national examples, but co-ops, collectives, employee-owned corporations, and similar institutions can function quite well in our market economy).

    ([1] which is why "anarcho-capitalism" or "libertarian capitalism" is ultimately self-defeating; keeping property concentrated into the hand of the few requires a strong state.)

    --
    Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
    You cannot wash away blood with blood
  9. *BSD is dying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic
    Yet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered *BSD community when last month IDC confirmed that *BSD accounts for less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on top of of the latest Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

    You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. NetBSD is the most endangered of them all.

    Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

    OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.

    Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to another charnel house.

    All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick nd its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS hobbyist dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

    1. Re:*BSD is dying by clarkgoble · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      Doesn't OSX give *BSD strength? While Apple certainly has troubles, it seems that basing it's OS on BSD means that Darwin has a lot of support. What's more, the problems of Open Source software that *BSD faces most Linux face as well. With Apple supporting DVD playing in OSX 10.1 we'll have a Unix with far more important software than Linux.

  10. Re:Lunch by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic
    Yet nother crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered *BSD community when last month IDC confirmed that *BSD accounts for less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on top of of the latest Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

    You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. NetSD is the most endangered of them all.

    Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

    OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.

    Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to another charnel house.

    All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick nd its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS hobbyist dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

    NetBSD is dying

  11. *BSD is dying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic
    Yt another crippling ombshell hit the beleaguered *BSD community when last month IDC confirmed that *BSD accounts for less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on top of of the latest Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

    You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *SD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. NetBSD is the most endangered of them all.

    Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

    OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.

    Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to another charnel house.

    All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick nd its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS hobbyist dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

    NetBSD is dying

  12. *BSD is dying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Yet another crippling bombshell hit th beleaguered *BSD community when last month IDC confirmed that *BSD accounts for less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on top of of the latest Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

    You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. NetBSD is the most endangered of them all.

    Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

    OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.

    Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to another charnel house.

    All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick nd its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS hobbyist dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

    NetBSD is dying

  13. Re:Patents at work by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic
    Yet anothrcrippling bombshell hit the beleaguered *BSD community when last monthIDC confirmed that *BSD accounts for less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on top of of the latest Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

    You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. NetBSD is the most endangered of them all.

    Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

    OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.

    Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to another charnel house.

    All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick nd its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS hobbyist dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

    NetBSD is dying

  14. Re:Wow. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic
    Yet another crippling bombshellhit the bleaguered *BSD community when last month IDC confirmed that *BSD accounts for less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on top of of the latest Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

    You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very ba for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. NetBSD is th most endangered of them all.

    Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

    OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.

    Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to another charnel house.

    All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick nd its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS hobbyist dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

    *BSD is dying