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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."

49 of 549 comments (clear)

  1. Getting rid of DRM? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Will it strip out DRM so we can listen to our own music on our own machines without hassle?

    1. 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

    2. Re:Getting rid of DRM? by W2k · · Score: 4, 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?

      I believe what the parent poster wanted was to remove DRM from his own media, but not from media that he had himself created. The concept that you only "own" media you've created yourself is ridicilous; If I have bought a DVD in a store, it's mine. I don't own the copyright, but the physical product belongs to me, so if I want to remove DRM from it, that's my business and my right. By any sane definition of the word, that does not infringe copyright. Making copies for my personal use is Fair Use.

      Obviously, I don't live in the US. Where I live, when you've bought something, you own it.

      --
      Quality, performance, value; you get only two, and you don't always get to pick.
    3. Re:Getting rid of DRM? by McNally · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Obviously, I don't live in the US. Where I live, when you've bought something, you own it.

      Enjoy it while it lasts..
    4. 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.

    5. 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.

    6. 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.

    7. Re:Getting rid of DRM? by pacman+on+prozac · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Aye me for one.

      Quite disgusting in my opinion to compare someone infringing on copyright with a pirate who rapes, pillages and murders people on the high seas.

      Most actual acts of piracy at sea are completely savage affairs with the victims lucky to escape alive.

      Obviously this is about the same level as some kid copying a CD instead of paying $4 for it.

  2. Linux is here! by schlagel_j · · Score: 5, Funny

    Finally, when I use linux, I can bring along some of the windows stability issues, and reasons that I moved away from Windows. At least all of the fancy pages will work!

  3. 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.

    --
    Who are you? The new #2 Who is #1? You are #617565. I am not a number, I am a free man! Muhahaha.
    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 tepples · · Score: 5, Informative

      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?

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

      thanks to Linux's memory protection and I/O abstraction, nothing affects system reliability unless it goes through the kernel ... 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?

      No, no, you have a fair point that I hadn't considered. I agree with you completely - No kernel mods, this should at worst crash the player in question, not the whole system.

      I do, though, have to wonder if (at least) WMP9 support requires a (binary-only, of course) kernel module to enforce its DRM... If so, my earlier comment on stability would still apply. If not, will this allow playback of protected content, or have they glossed over that small omission from full compatibility?

    5. Re:This isn't actually a bad thing... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative
      Er? your post is logical enough, but why would a media player codec need its own kernel module? Unless you are rendering WMP9 in hardware?
      Under Windows, the sound drivers participate in something called "Secure Audio Path", meaning that they have been inspected and signed by Microsoft to prove that they will not allow the user to save audio data to disk or otherwise defeat the DRM. Under GNU/Linux, there are any number of ways to capture the digital audio data before it passes through an analog conversion, including:
      • 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.
    6. 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.

      --

      "Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"

      Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
  4. $149 per copy by PaintyThePirate · · Score: 5, Funny

    Well, the price is about the same as Windows Media Player 9 on Windows.

    --
    eclecti.cc
    1. Re:$149 per copy by Trelane · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Windows comes for free on almost any new computer unless you go out of your way to buy one without it (which is next to impossible).


      Incorrect. The price of Windows is included with the computer. More accurately, you're claiming that the price of Windows comes bundled in with the cost of the computer, and you have to go out of your way to avoid paying for a copy of Windows with every new PC. This is what you may hear being referred to as the "Microsoft Tax".

      Also my campus bookstore sells copies of Windows XP Pro for $20. When coupled with a $20 copy of Office 2003 Pro, there's not much reason for my to use Linux for my office computing needs.


      While not impossible, this is highly unlikely. According to Pricewatch, XP Pro Academic Upgrade is currently running $68 ($80 for the boxed version).

      More likely is that your university has joined Microsoft's Campus Software Programs (either willingly or because it was coerced by Microsoft; more details if you want). Essentially, the students all pay $30-$70 per semester and, in return, they can go to their local bookstore, show proof of ID, and get an upgrade version of Windows XP (read your license carefully!), and one copy of MS Office. Other software may also be included (at my uni, Publisher and Visual Studio are also included). You then go down to the bookstore and plunk down more money for software you probably don't need anyway on top of the per-semester payments!

      Pretty sweet deal if you ask me. Well, for Microsoft anyway--universities shell out even more money for software they likey don't need (as you pointed out, Windows is gonna be installed anyway), and the school will find it even harder to switch away from Microsoft (since that'd require recalling (and auditing the recall of!) every piece of software given out under the programme).

      What's worse is hearing people, being fleeced $150-$350 over 5 years,--not counting summer school-- for software they don't need anyway, and hearing them say it's such a great deal because they get Windows XP Pro for $7!

      --

      --
      Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
  5. 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

  6. What about VideoLAN or MPlayer? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative
    Why not just use the VideoLAN Client or MPlayer? Both play WMV files on my Linux box without problems...

    -H

    1. Re:What about VideoLAN or MPlayer? by sugar+and+acid · · Score: 5, Informative

      The real concern here is that the MPlayer fully installed is dubious legally. That is why Suse and probably a few other distros only come with crippled versions that can not play WMV files and the like, though for suse a fully capable binary install exist elsewhere, but obviously this is out of the scope of the Suse companies legal culpibility. In the plan put forth your really paying for a licence to use the said technology, as the implementation has already been around in linux for a while now.

  7. Re:Real Player? by SavedLinuXgeeK · · Score: 5, Informative

    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
  8. I got a different message from this press release by joeysmith · · Score: 5, Informative
    Turbolinux engineers developed new software called Turbo Media Player that works with xine, a widely-used Linux media engine, to make it possible for customers to watch streaming video in Windows Media format.


    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
  9. 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.

    --
    This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
    1. Re:I can do the same thing by bigjnsa500 · · Score: 4, Interesting
      A hack? Are you serious? Putting the codec package in /usr/lib/win32 and you got Windows streaming. If you wanna do it thru a browser, you only need the Mplayer Plugin.

      With this, I can do all Quicktime trailers, Windows Media streams, you name it. Heck, you get the RealPlayer codecs and you can do that too.

      --
      This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
    2. Re:I can do the same thing by cbreaker · · Score: 4, Informative

      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. -
    3. Re:I can do the same thing by Fourier · · Score: 4, Funny

      you can smear poop on a blank cdr, put it in your drive, and mplayer will play it.

      Well, yeah, but it's gonna sound like shit.

  10. Finally... by MsGeek · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Someone puts out a distro with PowerDVD for Linux. Too bad for TurboLinux that you can buy two of these excellent DVD players with VGA-out and still have money for a few used DVDs for the same price it costs to buy a copy of their distro.

    Really, the time of DVD on desktop computers for anything other than loading software and (if it's a burner) burning DVDs is gone, gone, gone. Long live the cheapo "hacked by Chinese" DVD player.

    --
    Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
  11. And in Other News by Vengie · · Score: 4, Funny

    AP Newswire -- Barbados:

    Apparently, Satan, otherwise known as the Prince of Darkness or the Fallen Angel, has taken up residence in nearby sunny Barbados. When questioned about his recent arrival into this mortal plane, he claims to have come to the tropical islands for his retirement. "You see, my home kept freezing over, so I figured why not enter the lucrative ice-cube business." Profits from Hell-on-Ice exceed 10bn quarterly, and after the OpenIPO, HOI stock has split three times and nearly doubled in value.

    St. Peter, the Father, Son, Holy Ghost, Virgin Mary and Rabbi Lottstein were unavailable for comment.

    --
    When in doubt, parenthesize. At the very least it will let some poor schmuck bounce on the % key in vi. (Larry Wall)
  12. The Price of DMCA Compliance by psi42 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    -----------
    ""Turbolinux 10 F..." will be available for purchase in Japan on May 28, 2004 and is priced at $149 per copy. Customers upgrading from the previous version of Turbolinux Desktop can purchase 10F for $64. Customers outside Japan can purchase "Turbolinux 10 F..." starting June 30, 2004."
    -----------

    So, for $149, one gets:

    * Legal DVD Playback
    So... the extra price in this case is to maintain legality with a piece of legislation (the DMCA), which, in the context of libdvdcss, does not make a significant appeal to the common sense politicians are so well known to lack. For an extra price, you can comply with the DMCA. Linux already has everything you need to play DVDs, except this one piece of legality, which is bound to cost more than all the rest combined.

    * Legal WMA Playback
    First of all, who uses WMA anyway? We all know ogg is THE format for audio, and if not that, mp3. As for video, there are far better (cheaper) routes to go.

    * Realplayer
    Hmm... realplayer for linux is a free (not libre) download...

    Flash support
    Oh yeah, this is worth a piece of the price all right.....
    Unless they got the code from Macromedia and fixed all the problems, this is worth nothing.

    And for this little insertion of proprietary code, I suppose redistribution is going to be illegal, despite the 99.9% prevalence of (superior) GPL'd code this distro is sure to have.

    This makes our TCO look _really_ bad.....

    Don't get me wrong here, I don't have anything against selling Linux, or support for Linux, for money. But this kind of thing is something that should be marketed as an add-on for any linux distro, not as part of a distro that will be rendered illegal for distribution due to this proprietary code. :)

    --
    Defenestrate Windows...
  13. PowerPC? by Seehund · · Score: 4, Insightful

    AFAIK, TurboLinux is/was one of the bigger PPC Linux distros. I saw nothing specifically mentioned in the PR about this, but does this mean that WM9, RA8 and reasonably up to date Flash support has finally spread from x86? I hope other vendors like Terra Soft (Yellow Dog Linux) will follow suit or sublicense from TurboLinux. At least for their not-downloaded-for-free versions.

    --
    Help savingAmigaOS and a free PowerPC market
    1. Re:PowerPC? by bmidgley · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

  14. Ethics of TurboLinux by Technician · · Score: 5, Informative

    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!
    1. Re:Ethics of TurboLinux by Quattro+Vezina · · Score: 5, Informative

      TurboLinux, SCO/Caldera, SuSE, and Connectiva were once part of an alliance called UnitedLinux, intent on creating a united Linux distribution.

      No member of UnitedLinux owned another. They put out one release, and once the litigation started, everything stalled. United is effectively no more--they still technically exist, but all operations are dead.

      One thing interesting is that UnitedLinux had one member for each major geographic area except Africa. North America had SCO/Caldera, South America had Connectiva, Europe had SuSE, and Japan had TurboLinux.

      --
      I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
  15. 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.

    --
    Moderation Totals: Flamebait=2, Troll=1, Redundant=1, Insightful=6, Overrated=1, Underrated=1, Total=12. (not mine)
  16. 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

  17. Can't this already be done? by phisheadrew · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Could someone please explain how this adds any functionality that mplayer doesn't already have?

    I've never come across a movie that mplayer wasn't able to play.

  18. Re:Wait a sec... by jefe7777 · · Score: 5, Informative

    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?

  19. Re:Wait a sec... by DaHat · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You are what is wrong with the Linux community, thinking that everything should be/is free. Do you think they are the first company to sell a distribution? RedHat, Mandrage, SUSE, you can buy a copy of their distro from all of em. If you don't like doing so, then just DL an ISO somewhere, otherwise, quit complaining.

    As the other poster pointed out, just because something runs on Linux (or is Linux), does not mean it's free. You are helping to propagate the myth that everything about Linux is free, if that were the case, I highly doubt as many big name companies would do ANY development work in porting their apps to Linux, just to give them away for free.

    --
    Help Brendan pay off his student loans
  20. 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.

  21. Re:Real Player? by Zorak+Man · · Score: 4, Insightful

    O wow...complete with Real Player? Why don't ya just boot windows?

    Sounds like your joking, but you are right in my view. I run two desktop systems, a Linux and a Windows PC. They are different OSs for different things.

    --

    404 .sig not found
  22. Re:Headline is a lie by spike-288 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Wrong spirittraveller, Turbolinux spent several months negotiating their license with MS. Read this article before you shame the slashdot editors... http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5201352.html

  23. Re:Power DVD by swordgeek · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Guilt free? That's easy--there should NOT be any guilt at watching your own legally purchased, rented, or borrowed DVDs. The platform must NOT be a legal limitation.

    Do you actually mean 'within the law?' In that case, you're home free too! As you can see on the EFF website, the decryption code lawsuits have been dropped! DeCSS is safe, legal, and free!

    Furthermore, Jon Johansen was acquitted on all charges.

    Download DeCSS! Use it! Feel free, in every sense of the word! This was a rare victory for the good guys.

    --

    "People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
  24. Re:How much is the free download? by Gleef · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Free download was never a GPL requirement to begin with. Legend has it that RMS used to sell Emacs at $150 per tape, you can currently pay $345 for a pair of CDs full of GPL source code from the FSF.

    If you are really interested, I suggest you read the GPL. To speed things up, Sections 2 and 3 answer your question (note, 2b "no charge for the license" doesn't preclude charging for the download, the CD, or whatever method of giving the person the software you care to do, it's the license that is Free, not the media).

    That, and as a prior poster indicated, the Media Player stuff isn't GPL'ed by a long shot.

    --

    ----
    Open mind, insert foot.
  25. No problems by Saeed+al-Sahaf · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Personally, I don't use WMP, but I think in terms of advancing Linux on the desktop for the average non-techie user, this is good, because like it or not, there is a lot of Windows Media stuff out there that the average person wants to play.

    --
    "Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
  26. Re:Unreasonable pricing by kforeman · · Score: 5, Informative

    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
  27. Ummm, well by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Currently, the Media 9 codecs have probably the best licensing of any complete advanced codec out there. They are an open standard, sumbitted to and accepted by STMPE meaning it can't be changed with out STMPE's approval (and those changes being made public). This is the same as MPEG-2 or MPEG-4. The difference is in the cost, the media 9 codecs cost a good bit less to license than either MPEG-2 or MPEG-4.

    That's something a lot of people forget about beloved projects like LAME and Xvid. The projects themselves are probably legal, protected as academic works since they are source only. That does not mean you may legally use them. The formats they encode are open standards, but ones that are licensed. What's more, MPEG-4 has a content use fee, you have to pay $0.04 per 2 hours of content.

    Now for audio, the solution is simple at this point: Vorbis. It is available for use free of charge. However their video codec isn't yet complete. Well all the other formats are either proprietary, or open but licensed. Even MP3 decoders need a license. All those free MP3 decoder projects that haven't paid it ($60,000 one time fee I believe) are technically illegal to use.

    In practise the MPEG group and companies like Microsoft have more or less ignored people that use their standards without a license when not for profit, however that doesn't make it legal.

    So until there is a free video standard, you either need to choose a quite old standard (MPEG-1 might be free of licenseing but I am not sure), pay a license fee, or you'll be infringing. That is true if you use MPEG-4 or WM-9. Main difference is WM-9 is cheaper.

    Now before you shoot back about MS locking people in, read my post again carefully. WM-9 is no longer proprietary. They submitted it to SMPTE as an open standard. What this means is that anyone can implement WM-9 for a standard licensing fee (called a reasonable and non-discriminitory license, or RAND license). It also means they can't make any future changes to break compatibility since any change has to be submitted to SMPTE and if accepted will be made available to all who licensed the format.

    This is the exact same way that MPEG-4 works.

  28. Nope, guess again by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 4, Informative
    In a bid to become the HD-DVD standard, Microsoft has made WM-9 an open standard. What that means is that they submitted their standard to the appropriate body, SMPTE in this case, and it has been accepted. Part of this acceptance is that it be made available for a reasonable and non-discriminitory fee. That means that ANYONE can license them for the same fee. You don't negoiate it, it is a fixed thing. There is a page with fee schedules and comparisons to other formats on their site.

    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.

  29. Re:Real Player? by AstroDrabb · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It could just be the FreeBSD version? Under Fedora MPlayer and Xine work very well for me. There are also other front-ends to xine such as totem for GNome which is very nice as well.

    --
    If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
    it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison