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Turbolinux Licenses Windows Media 9
spike-288 writes "According a press release, Turbolinux is the first major Linux distributor to license and ship a media player capable of streaming Windows Media audio and video. The new product, "Turbolinux 10 F..." is based on Turbolinux 10 Desktop but will also include licensed versions of Macromedia Flash, legal commercial DVD playback (via Cyberlink's PowerDVD player), RealPlayer 8, commercial Kanji fonts and iPod support via gtkpod (including enhanced functionality)." Update: 04/28 02:33 GMT by T : Prostoalex adds "The Windows Media codecs for Linux will be available for download for $64, the complete TurboLinux OS will cost $150 in Japan and the United States."
-H
Well honestly this is a good step in the direction for linux adaptation. And linux has real player anyways, but the adoption of major programs can easily lead to a higher conversion to linux, especially for people tied closely to certain apps. Btw, even if it is not licsensed fully, xine does a good job of playing real streams and of playing streaming window media feeds.
je suis parce que j'aime
Perhaps I misread, but this article seems to be saying that they used xine to play WMF, and makes no reference whatsoever to licensing WM 9.
However, they do appear to have an agreement with Cyberlink.
As for being "the first major Linux distributor to license and ship a media player capable of streaming Windows Media audio and video", well, I've been doing this for quite some time now, thanks to apt-get install mplayer
Umm, Wasn't TurboLinux bought by SCO? A quick Google search brings up the snip- SCO has announced a number of professional services offerings around TurboLinux's TurboLinux and SuSE's Linux
I don't plan on supporting SCO in any way until the litigation is over.
The truth shall set you free!
Maya runs on linux, and it's not free.
Oracle runs on linux, and it's not free.
So they have a media player, that's licensing windows media player code, so it can play windows media.
and it's not free.
what doesn't compute?
a Windows XP Professional OEM license.
Basically you just have to pony up cash to the thugs at MPAA and promise not to do something naughty like allow the playing of DVDs from more than 1 region, etc.
The reason DVDs are encrypted has nothing to do with security since you can still do a bit-by-bit copy of it and it's fine. It's really too enforce the region coding system that is integral to the MPAA marketing scheme.
All they say is that it is capable of playing Windows Media files, by using its own "Turbo Media Player" which works with xine.
My guess is that "Turbo Media Player" is nothing more than a front-end for xine (ala Totem), with xine doing all the work.
It's already possible to play Windows Media files in Linux... this is nothing new at all.
The thing about Cyberlink ProDVD is kind of interesting, but definitely not on the same newsworthiness scale as a Linux distro licensing MS technology would be.
Shame on you Slashdot editors... shame shame shame !
But it's a grey area and although never really pushed into court, you're not technically supposed to use some of those DLL's without a windows license.
Most of the codec packages are given to you "if you own a legal copy of windows."
So yea, it works, but if a major distribution started making big bucks and came with these dll's on the CD, it might see the courtroom..
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Thats a funny one :)
I agree though, mplayer will play anything (including half downloaded files...which is handy)
In my opinion, MPlayer is the best media player thats out there because once you have installed all the codecs, you can throw anything at it and not worry.
Can your karma go above being Excellent?
I (and I think many of us) consider Linux as embodying freedom (in both the RMS and and the beer senses) in the IT world.
It depends on what you're putting before the slash in */Linux. Your view corresponds to "GNU" before the slash, just like the Debian contract. However, some Linux-based operating systems such as Lycoris and Linspire have different goals that they use the same kernel to meet.
And third, I do consider it nice to have native (rather than the hack MPlayer and the like use) support for a given format, but not at the expense of making Linux have the same stability as Windows.
Remember that thanks to Linux's memory protection and I/O abstraction, nothing affects system reliability unless it goes through the kernel, and as long as you haven't tainted your kernel with a "GPL\0which stands for Greedy Private License" driver, a few proprietary apps shouldn't break the increased reliability that the free software process brings to the rest of your system. Or what evidence can you provide against my assertion?
Mac OS is still rather expensive. Not only does an entry-level eMac computer cost hundreds of USD more than the equivalent eMachines computer, but Apple chooses to refuse to license the special firmware to get competing PowerPC architecture machines to boot Mac OS. To estimate the cost of a Mac OS license, you need to estimate not only the cost of the boxed OS upgrade but also the cost of a bootloader capable of starting Mac OS on third-party hardware. Or do you know of an independent Carbon API implementation to match the independent OpenStep API implementation and independent Win32 API implementation?
Did you even read the article? TurboLinux licenced the CODECS, not the player itself. The player is going to be an in-house developed product appropriately called "Turbo Media Player."
Mplayer used to be the best but now xine is better. I have all four major players installed, xine,mplayer, videolan and avifile. This combination of four covers every possible file format; however, each individual player has its own problems. mplayer has problems playing real media files: audio out of sync, altered colors, etc. Xine is perfect for real files, but fails to play some asf or wmv files. Avifile is the best for asf and wmv but does not play ogm, etc. In order to be able to play everything you need to have all four major players installed.
Microsoft's patent on the ASF file format
Windows Media Licensing Terms, and specifically the the licensing costs for Windows Media Audio and Video 9 codecs for non-Windows desktops and hardware devices
Apple's Quicktime software and hardware licensing terms
These terms may or may not apply, depending on the local laws. But in the United States at least it's certainly not legal to use Windows DLLs that way. Now I know people will start claiming they don't care, but purposedly breaking laws isn't going to help the Linux community.
I was the sole developer of TurboLinux/PPC.
The problem is that the company always had a "healthy" sense of competition between the US and Japanese offices. Since the PPC effort was done from the US office, they didn't do a whole lot with it in Japan.
When TurboLinux ran out of money, they sent all the US employees home and sold off the Japanese office. So the side here that actually did PPC stuff was dismantled.
Helix Player 100% open source. RealPlayer 10, coming this summer, adds non-open source components like RealAudio, RealVideo, MP3, Flash, etc. to the Helix Player. Kevin Foreman GM, Helix RealNetworks, Inc.
Kevin Foreman
Whine whine whine, piss and moan. Look, if you really want to get paid, go open up a charity or something. Here in the US, and in many parts of the world, we have a free market, and you're gonna have to compete on it against our free code. Got a problem with it? Go to cuba, I hear they're still communist, and they'll gladly pay you to keep working.
Free Software is not communist in any way, but neither is it capitalist. It is Free of any economic system and is focused completely on the rights of the end-user. You want to steal my rights from me? Fascist. You can have my rights when you pry them from my cold, dead fingers.
You programmers who don't have rich parents and don't want to live in your parent's basement that need to get paid for your work must know that something like 90% of all development is in-house stuff that never sees the light of day. Probably less than 1% of all development is actually products that reach market, and most of those are games!
Quit whining, fucker. If Free Software causes software to no longer be sold as product, it's effect on the marketplace will be minimal at worst, completely unnoticeable at best.
Like what I said? You might like my music
Motown, well put. Thanks for your support. Our plan is to bring out the 100% open source Helix Player (inc Vorbis anfd Theora support) and it superset cousin, the RealPlayer 10 for Linux (inc. non-open source components like RA/RV, MP3, Flash, etc. on top of the Helix Player) this summer. Alpha for both is scheduled for May 10th.... Kevin Foreman GM, Helix RealNetworks, Inc.
Kevin Foreman
That's why you ship the CD with a retrieval script and let end users download the DLLs from an offshore site or P2P network. You can also copy/patch files off the Windows install; the DMCA has a provision for "interoperability" which may protect this activity (well, if Microsoft didn't own the feds).
Helix Player is 100% open source, inc. Vorbis and Theora. RealPlayer 10, built on top of Helix Player will add non-open source formats like RealAudio/RealVideo, MP3, Flash and MPEG-4 (for fee) when it goes alpha on May 10th. Kevin Foreman GM, Helix RealNetworks, Inc.
Kevin Foreman
implying that it's illegal to use DeCSS based solutions to do so.
Or worse yet, implying that DeCSS is the only way to play DVD's in Linux. I don't even think it's the preferred method. libdvdcss works quite nicely, and doesn't rely on a warez'd CSS key to do the job.
- An LD_PRELOAD library that captures accesses to
/dev/dsp or another sound device - A modified kernel sound module that saves the audio data
- Setting the recording source to the sound output
- Emulate the entire system and capture sound output (such as with UML, Bochs, Mac-On-Linux, etc)
Basically, it is impossible to enforce DRM unless every component all the way down to hardware is under the media providers' control. Which means it is impossible to enforce DRM in Free Software.Real and Quicktime aren't any better. Quicktime now uses MPEG-4, which is also an open standard with RAND licensing. It is, however, more expensive than WM-9. Real is still proprietary and thus up to Real networks as to what is available to who and for how much.
So no, MS is not gouging Linux. If the company that chooses to implement it gouges you, that's their bussiness and you should take it up with them. The license is standard, and the terms are known to the world, just like MPEG-2 or MPEG-4.
Trouble with those is they make you buy the computer to go with it.
You only have to buy hardware which is almost anything. Here you can buy an OEM Windows license. This qualifies as hardware. You don't have to buy a computer to get an OEM version of Windows.
It shows that Microsoft is playing nice with the competition.
"Under a court order" and "playing nice" aren't really the same thing.
Right now, they've got a Federal Judge asking them why people aren't licensing their technology, and having a Linux distributor buy-in to their program is a major win for MS in the legal world.
2) Pron is moving to DRM (via DRMed WMV). Give it a year and free video trading will dry up substantially (but not go away, obviously). ;)
Doubtful, considering the fact that there's already terabytes of porn already out there with no DRM
Xine is flawless for me too on Gentoo Linux. I only find that Xine has problems when it is setup by a commercial distro which cripples it. Xine can play my DVDs better than any windows dvd player(I've tried quite a few of them) which better video quality. Xine will also play WMV streams with no problem for me. For some odd formats that Xine doesn't support, MPlayer has never failed to play.
Only under Linux have I ever seen such flawless playback as I get with Xine and MPlayer.
> There were radio stations referred to as pirate radio in the 1960s and 1970s. It was not, however, their playing of music without paying royalties (I don't know if they did or not, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn the didn't) for which it was called pirate radio.
Actually, pirate radio in Britain in the 1960s was actually broadcast from ships in international waters, which seems a likely origin for the name. (And yes, I think they did have the ship owners' permission)
These two could be done on Windows as well
No. A "modified kernel sound module" wouldn't get logo'd and signed by Microsoft WHQL, and "emulat[ing] the entire system" could be detected, as extant emulators have their telltale signatures, which is why Secure Audio Path doesn't work on VMware.
$64 doesn't pay for just the WM codecs. It also covers other licenses such as PowerDVD, Flash, new commercial Asian fonts, etc. All these things cost money so the overall price for WM might be very small.