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Turbolinux Licenses Windows Media 9

Posted by timothy on from the that's-a-first dept.

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."

13 of 549 comments (clear)

  1. This isn't actually a bad thing... by terraformer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It shows that there is a real place for Linux in the commercial/proprietary software market. Using this, as a foot in the door, the more open standards can be intorduced and promoted to gain larger foothold.

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    1. Re:This isn't actually a bad thing... by pla · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It shows that there is a real place for Linux in the commercial/proprietary software market.

      And you consider that a "good" thing?

      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. Now, I certainly won't put down some of the great work the major distro companies have done for us, but this goes a little too far - The difference between "added value" to "basically un-free (in both senses).


      Using this, as a foot in the door, the more open standards can be intorduced and promoted to gain larger foothold.

      I hope you meant that as sarcastic.

      Using this as a precedent, companies can feel safer about making totally closed standards, with the hope that if they become popular enough, even "those Linux nuts" will eventually license it from them.


      Not good. I can see this from three main angles... First, while nice to have a legal way to do most of the things mentioned in the FP, I would point out that a legal way to do that already existed - Use Windows. Second, illegal (in some countries) ways to do all of those already existed, making this very unlikely to see adoption by any but the most picky of people and companies. 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.

    2. Re:This isn't actually a bad thing... by kfg · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Well no, it doesn't actually. It only shows that TurboLinux is willing to take the risk that there is.

      It will take actually selling it in quantity to show that there is a real place for Linux in the propriatary software market.

      Red Hat/Mandrake, SuSE/et al have already shown there's a place for it in the commercial market.

      Commercial != Propriatary

      KFG

    3. Re:This isn't actually a bad thing... by Jace+of+Fuse! · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      First off, who says bringing Windows Media Player to Linux will make Linux unstable? It MIGHT make for an unstable Media Player but then, a single application should never make an entire OS unstable, right?

      Right? Well I assume that MUST be the case, since everybody gripes about how single errant applications can bring down Windows.

      If it does turn out that bringing WMP to Linux makes Linux as a whole unstable, then maybe Linux doesn't have that superior stability that everyone has always claimed.

      Truth be known I don't even use WMP on my Windows machines. I stick to MP3 if I can help it. Sure, it's not opened like Ogg, but it's not quite as evil as WMP and it's a whole lot more popular.

      I really don't see the need for WMP on any platform, much less Linux, but if someone wants to pay for a codec, let 'em.

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  2. Expensive by eww · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sounds nice. I would pay $20 for something like that but $146???? That's too much for what you get.

    Eric

  3. I can do the same thing by bigjnsa500 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Weird, but I can do the same thing with Slackware and Mplayer for free.

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  4. Anyone find it ironic? by emkman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Just about 3 hours ago I was reading an article, cant remember where ..cough cough.. about how evil the Sun desktop is because they are licensing technology from Microsoft and are therefore desecrating the GPL somehow. Got it, Sun uses proprietary third party code in their distro, and are therefore evil. So I better find a new distro. I was thinking about Turbolinux 10F. I hear it can play proprietary Windows Media and Real formats, isn't that awesome!!! Man I can't wait. Ill never use that stupid evil Sun distro again.

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  5. The real tragedy by rknop · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The real tragedy is that Slashdot could post a story that uses the phrase:

    legal commercial DVD playback

    and not leave everybody scratching their head saying, "Huh?"

    Playback. Just playing the frikkin' things, even if you own them completely on the up-and-up, is of questionable legality unless you do it in an Officially Sanctioned Manner. How stupid is that?

    Our society has lost so much perspective it's very scary.

    -Rob

  6. How this fits into Microsoft's scheme by eman1961 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    The main complaint from the European Commission's antitrust ruling against Microsoft is that Microsoft locks people into Windows because most people who use Windows will use Microsoft proprietary formats. This is certainly true. My aunt Millie will upload all of her pictures, and perhaps some music into Microsoft applications. It then becomes far too daunting for her to switch to any operating system other than one from Microsoft.

    This is Microsoft's main ploy - it locks aunt Millie into using Microsoft operating systems basically forever.

    Now, Microsoft has set a precedent for licensing its formats to Linux distributions.

    The real problem is that it is evil to use Microsoft formats, regardless of the operating system.

    Contrary to previous posts, this is NOT a good thing.

  7. Re:Getting rid of DRM? by BigBuckHunter · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yes, you simply have to de-select the DRM features when ripping/encoding your DVD's. Or did you want to remove DRM from other peoples media?

    Sorry to play devils advocate there

    The main argument sould be that it is not free software, not open source, and not based on a free /open standard. Not, "can I remove DRM?".

    Thank you for your time,
    BBH

  8. Re:Getting rid of DRM? by Xaer0cool · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Pirating? one guy in his house? I live in south east asia. Pirating is going to the mall and seeing thousands upon thousands of pirated DVD's of all the movies ever made being sold for profit. A dude in his house wanting to wath a DVD on his linux box is not pirating. Go after the people that make money off it.

  9. Re:Getting rid of DRM? by gujo-odori · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I used to live in SE Asia too, and yeah, you can walk into any video shop and buy a VCD for about a buck. But that's not piracy either; piracy is robbing ships by force of arms. What those shops are doing is copyright infringement.

    What one guy in his house does (and there are many, many people who copy DVDs purely for fair use reasons, starting with all of us who have toddlers in the house :-) is not even copyright infringement, it really is fair use. Now, if you *distribute* a copy, that is infringement.
    Backing up your Disney DVDs so your kids don't destroy them, then playing the backups while the originals are kept under lock and key, is not infringement.

  10. Re:Getting rid of DRM? by gujo-odori · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Cache" in the sense of "CPU cache" and "disk cache" is directly derived from the standard OED definition, and indeed, it fills the role in a computer that a cache of provisions filled for, for example, a miner in the Klondike. That meaning of the word cache is still alive and well in modern English, as any (educated, at least) native speaker could tell you. If you dig through a bunch of news articles about the war in Iraq, I am sure you will find it there.

    In other words, the meaning hasn't been changed, merely extended to something that is conceptually the same but which did not exist at the time the word was borrowed into English from French.

    In the case of using "piracy" to mean "copyright infringement," on the other hand, that is a complete break with the actual meaning, and was made up by RIAA and MPAA. It is not even an evolution; merely something they repeated and repeated until they got the press and politicians repeating it, but that doesn't make it true. Piracy remains the hijacking and robbery of vessels (and sometimes road vehicles; the meaning has been extended that far) by force of arms. And yes, pirates do exist today, in the places you mentioned, among others. I'm pretty sure they aren't copying DVDs.

    Your claim that there are pirated clothes is as false as your claim regarding copyright infringement. Pirated CDs, DVDs, clothes, etc., are genuine articles which are stolen by pirates and subsequently resold (I haven't heard that pirates target that sort of thing much, so these are probably very rare, if not non-existent). A knock-off Rolex, on the other hand, is just what you properly named it as: a case of trademark infringement. If they copied the inside as well (not likely), then it would probably also be a case of patent infringement. None of copyright/trademark/patent infringement are acts of piracy. They are acts of infringement. That is the legal definition, and the only one that even RIAA can use in court. The legal system does not define "piracy" as the infringement of copyright, trademark, or patent. As one who hopes to take the bar exam in the future, I certainly hope it never does so and do not expect it will.

    Piracy has not "evolved" to mean any kind of infringement. It is just a word stuck onto it by RIAA et al. That is the complete opposite of evolution, and something that is rejected by many people other than myself.