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Council of the EU Says "We Cannot Support Linux"
An anonymous reader writes "The Council of the EU has a streaming service so that we can watch its meetings — but the service can only be accessed by Mac or MS Windows users. This is because they employ WMV format for the videos. In the FAQ they express a really strange opinion about this: 'The live streaming media service of the Council of the European Union can be viewed on Microsoft Windows and Macintosh platforms. We cannot support Linux in a legal way. So the answer is: No support for Linux.' An online petition has been set up to create pressure to convince the EU council to change its service to one that is platform independent."
First off, they didn't hire an interpreter (come on, you going to tell me there isn't a properly-qualified English-language interpreter to fix that garbage? Second, whichever Microsoft zealot wrote that page really needs to expatiate on his reasoning. From where I sit, it looks like a blatant lie to cover up for laziness.
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"We cannot support Linux in a legal way."
What's so illegal about a Flash-based streaming player?
I would guess they can't support GNU/Linux in a legal way because they can't offer the codecs. Only parties that have an agreement of sorts or have paid M$ royalties can use it. GNU/Linux doesn't, though distributions like that one that used to be known as Lindows (can't remember the name) comes with closed-source ones.
The petition to urge them to use a platform-independent format is a good answer.
That should be "We're too ignorant to support Linux in a legal way."
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Why limit yourself to just one format? Offer both WMV *AND* Ogg Theora!
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
What about Realplayer exactly is illegal? I know it won't solve *BSDs and other *Nix users' problems, but Linux has a realplayer version.
So why again is it illegal to run something that is not MS specific?
Hello, welcome to the new year, we're in the 21st century, not in the early 90s, there's something called "interoperability" that has been growing in the tech world... Time for reality to harvest!
---- I am certain of only one thing : I know nothing else.
Obvoiusly soneone has wanted to point this out, if it's explicitly written on the EU site. At the risk of sounding trollish:
We will not have our legislation locked down in ways that force EU citicens to buy software from one specific vendor. FUCK YOU.
We like to think we're better than the US. Apperarently our legislators are also bought off. If you as an elected politician get your salary from Microsoft Corporation or Apple Computer inc, please report directly to me for your ticket to Baghdad and the Saddam Hussein rope massage. Thank you for your incompetent attempt at running a democracy, please don't come again.
Here's an equivalent argument.
90% of a country's population is caucasian, 6% is black, 3% is oriental and 1% is of other racial groups. The EU suddenly decides that it can only offer services to the majority, how fast do you think people's asses would be nailed to the wall?
They have an obligation to not discriminate between groups of people. By only allowing people using Windows or Mac OS/X to use services, that's discrimination.
Also, those statistics are misleading, since Opera identifies itself as IE by default.
Goten Xiao
When people recommend half-assed or not ready OSS solutions, it hurts the OSS cause. Theora isn't ready to go, it's not even remotely ready. There's a reason why it's still an alpha whereas Vorbis is a full release. It is in no way shape or form a ready competitor to WMV at this time.
It's much better to admit there's nothing that works out there that's OSS than to recommend a poor OSS solution. The reason is that the number one justification against OSS is shoddy quality. You talk to J. Random PHB and the reason they don't want to use OSS is because it's poor quality/not supported. Well, advocating things that are, in fact, poor quality just provides them with ammo for their argument.
Also it can hurt a format to get lots of exposure before it's ready. If everyone's first exposure to Theora is when it's buggy, that idea will form in their minds and later when it's stable, they will still associate Theora = buggy and thus give it a pass.
At this point, we just need to wait on Theora. Vorbis is great, I've no doubt in time Theroa will be its match, however it's not the kind of thing that will happen in a day.
They are a government agency. A business can decide to ignore some potential customers, but a government cannot decide to ignore citizens.
The really funny part of this story is you also can't watch those videos if you've got the version of Windows Vista with media player ripped out due to the EU's antitrust rulings (unless you download media player or some other WMV-capable player, of course). Hah hah.
That's an unbelievably bizarre metaphor - equating operating system support as anything like racial discrimination.
First they (the EU) force MS to marked a version of Windows without media-player... and then they release content that needs that very media player...
Not so fast dude! The last time I checked, no body has ever chosen to be born caucasian, black, oriental or otherwise...on the other hand, there is likely a huge probability that all these folks that do not belong to the "chosen" platform to support actually chose to use the platform. And now, they are clamoring for support! Jeez!
Sorry in advance in case you made an application to whoever created you, to create you the way you are.
From the linked site. It has been relatively easy to get .wmv, .mov, etc. working in Linux for quite some time now. Check out the MPlayer plugin for Firefox. For K/X/Ubuntu or other Debian-based distro users, "apt-get install mozilla-mplayer".
I do agree, however, that all government websites should make their content available platform-independent. But then, that would require common-sense, now wouldn't it?
"We may face a scorched and lifeless earth, but they're accountable to their shareholders first."
Or why limit yourself to proprietary formats? Anyone can use ogg, Windows users included. Been dealing with different video formats for quite some time now and the competition between different formats is not productive in my opinion, The multiplicity of codecs one needs to have is a burden. I'd like to see an open 'independent' format developed in a peer reviewed open environment that everyone can use, kinda like how *nix systems evolved, where the best ideas become the standards. Ogg is open. Anyone can contribute to making it better, even Microsoft.
I'm somewhat of a libertarian and believe in free market competition but sometimes, when everyone is trying to use their own market share leverage their consumer base with the objective of having their formats accepted as industry standards, the consumer is the one who loses out.
If all these competing companies really believed in technology they'd put everything they know on the table and let the best minds meld a standard from the best ideas. Competition is generally good, but look where it got us with cell phone companies. DARPA did a much better job with the Internet.
"Why don't we just create a world wide class action law suit against companies or organizations that do not support independent OS architecture?"
The community is not even really asking for *support*; merely to not be explicitly suppressed.
I have a banking site that I must use, which uses the user agent to decide who may and who may not use the web site to pay their bills.
I do not want "support" for my browser, I just want them to stop purposely trying to prevent me from using it. They do *more* work to try to suppress users than they would do to "support" them.
And any banking institution that has IT staff who consider it appropriate to use the User Agent string as part of security, should be approached with great suspicion anyway. This is not some small independent savings and loan -- it is Wells Fargo. The thing is, Wells Fargo's online banking system is pretty good. But their "Financial Services" division is nowhere near at the same level of competence.
Because *I* owe *them* money in this case, it's not exactly like I can choose to walk away. So I sort of have to take it. I'm just waiting for them to accuse me of fraud because instead of using my normal browser user agent string ("Bond/007; UK; Licensed to Kill"), I change it to something close enough to Internet Explorer 6 to get me in. (Great security *there*, Wells Fargo.)
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I guess we're supposed to ignore all the people who have been using Ogg Vorbis+Theora feeds for years (many listed on the Ogg Theora website and instead give in to an argument based on a version name and vague goals of "readiness", or for another overmoderated post in this thread, market presence built on violating the law. We're not supposed to advocate for people using unencumbered FLOSS software to do this job across platforms in a non-discriminatory way. Even according to the open source argument which dismisses social solidarity out of hand (something governments ought not do), discouraging use seems particularly unwise.
Digital Citizen
Same arguement applies here as it does with any other form of computerized documentation. All forms of government computerized documention should be done to open standards so it won't become unreadable when the license is no longer supported by the compan/y/ies that owns the patents. Really now, does anyone in the world want their governments computerized/digitized documentation controlled by some company that controls the patents for the method of storage? Does anyone want their governments documentation in a format that is digitalized by an executable with unknown code written in a country other then your own? Does anyone really want to trust their government or the maker of the file creating software not to include something akin to the SONY rootkit?
Citizens of the world should unite in the cause of demanding that all closed software be removed from all government computers and all government files. Citizens of the EU and other places often throw it up that the US is not as free as its forefathers planned and attempted to maintain with its Constitution and unfortunately too often they are right. Here is a chance for the EU to help lead the way, some of its countries already moving to keep closed formats out of government documents, time to increase that though. In the EU one should not need the permission of a US company to view EU government at work.
There's no point in offering video in just another proprietary format. The idea is that *everyone* should have access to this. Not just Linux, Windows, and Mac.
How can that be done? Pick a format that doesn't require royalties.
But whenever we see some site choose to make new content available in those very same Windows formats, many of the same people who were telling potential new users that all these things were easy on Linux suddenly switch and say that Linux users are locked out.
If we want to get people to use Linux, we have to get our story straight as to what Linux can do!
There are so many other options: from .mov to video containing mp3 files. Why .wmv?
... basically people have been successfully using it for a while. Technically QuickTime is older but prior to iTunes QuickTime was a bit flaky on the PC side and Windows Media filled the void. It is harder to displace a "defacto standard" than fill a void.
Inertia, it works,
I just got done ripping a DVD with menencoder and having read the man page I can't help but wonder if the reason video seems more complex than networking is because of all the disparate formats out there. We don't have different standards for SMTP or TCP/IP, we have one peer reviewed standard that works. Why should we have so many standards for video?
It's all ones and zeros, the real art is in the encoding compression, but seems there should be at least some consensus on handling this. I'd like to bet most of the problems here are purely mathematical and what we have with different companies coming up with different systems and patenting them is kind of like that Newton and Leibniz would have patented calculus independently had they made their discoveries today.
With video we have stuff like interlacing, progressive scanning, frames per second, etc.. Everyone seems to want a patent on the most trivial procedures and what we end up with is a big mess. Somewhere there should be a video RFC and a community of geeks should come up with a standard. Companies can still contribute, or if their ideas are so revolutionary and unique, fork and go off on their own.
Or, rather, they can decide that they aren't going to support any and every strange thing citizens want.
There's a real difference between accommodating a minority who's that way because of a physical problem they can't overcome (such as loss of limb use, blindness, etc) and a minority who's that way because they choose to be so.
For example suppose you tried to mandate that the government had to provide parking at their official buildings for any kind of vehicle someone might want. Now suppose that a trucker decides that they want to use their rig, complete with trailer, as the means of transportation. Now you have to have to go to a large amount of trouble because someone is choosing to try and make things difficult.
Of course in that case the government doesn't need to accommodate them. That person is perfectly capable of using another car or taking the bus or riding a bike or whatever.
Well the same goes for computers. The government can say they are only supporting the major OSes. You can't say "but they have to support all OSes!" because they don't and that's clearly impossible. What about the guy using a Commodore 128 to get on the net (it happens, encountered a guy who used one to play MUDs back in my MUD days)?
No, it's not. Using a codec that everyone can play after installing the additional software is better than using one that some people can't play at all.
Besides, it's not as if the Windows users would have to fend for themselves -- all the EU has to do is pick a player for Windows and link to it from their site (maybe write something like "can't see the video? click here"). It's Not That Hard!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
While I agree with your comments re: the suckiness of English (I speak five modern languages, including a couple of the "hard" ones), my comment in this regard wasn't that English should be forced upon anyone - if that page were in Dutch, French, or German, I'd shrug and figure that's where the website is, so the choice of language makes sense. But the fact that these conferences are streamed in wmv-only format and then the entire website is in broken English - that just looks bad. Really, unprofessionally, and given the number of interpreters/translators available to the EU, inexcusably bad. Moral of the story is: if you can't find a good translator for your webpage, write it in your native tongue.
political_news.c: warning: comparison is always true due to limited range of data type
I have a revolutionary idea. Dare I even say it... Oh well, for good or ill, here goes nothing: Offer the video in both formats ! And mpeg and Flash too.
I guess no one told the EU that the same video can simultaneously exist in more than one format. I'm starting to get the idea that this kind of ignorance and lack of common sense is quite common in EU's decision-making organs.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Eu translates all documents to 20 languages, including Latvian, Lithuanian, Estonian and Maltese. With 450 million people in EU and about 400 000 people speaking Maltese, we have EU caring for even 0.1% percent. Even the streaming service includes translations for those languages!
I don't really care about EU streaming service and it's lack of Linux support, but buying shrink wrapped Microsoft solutions has serious economical consequences. Directly: It drains money out of EU. Indirectly: there is less knowledge on howto build streaming solutions in EU, if all we know is howto "click next" in some wizard.
So why not use fluendo streaming or some other EU based solution instead?
signatures pending - ansa@kos.to - (dont mail there)
The only thing stopping them from 'legally' supporting Linux is the existence of software patents, which are not valid in the EU. Remind them of this.
Finally, remind them that this is not about Linux users. No one cares about Linux users. This is about users of anything other than Windows, including mobile phones. My mobile can play H.263, MPEG-4, and RealVideo 7,8 formats. If they pick WMV, this means the only people who can watch the video on their mobile phones are Windows Mobile users; they are helping Microsoft leverage a monopoly on the desktop to gain on in the mobile space. If they pick H.263 or MPEG-4, then anyone can watch them, whether they have Windows, Mac, or *NIX on their desktop, or Windows, Symbian or Linux on their mobile.
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This is not about Linux users, it's about a government entity supporting monopoly abuse.
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