Fluendo To Sell Proprietary Codecs For Linux

Several readers wrote in to tell us that the open source media software development company Fluendo has announced plans to sell native Linux implementations of proprietary video codecs such as Windows Media, MPEG-2, and MPEG-4. (Press release here.) From the article: "Currently, many Linux video applications facilitate Windows Media video playback using Windows DLL files and Wine, which provides suboptimal performance, particularly with streaming video. Fluendo's codecs could potentially provide better integration for streaming Windows Media playback in Linux web browsers as well as through GStreamer-based desktop applications like Totem."

Comments

Hmmmmmmmmn,

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

1) I don't believe (for xine at least) that wine is neccessary for asf (wmv) playback (the windows codec dlls are required, but used by xine without wine's help)

2) I guess a native binary blob is slightly better than a MS coded binary blob.... but frankly, it's still just a binary blob. You have no idea what its really doing.

Good luck to Fluendo however.

Re:Hmmmmmmmmn,

[doob]

Perhaps because of security fears?

"the NVIDIA Binary Graphics Driver for Linux is vulnerable to a buffer overflow that allows an attacker to run arbitrary code as root. This bug can be exploited both locally or remotely

You say that as if it were a current problem. This has actually been fixed in the last 3(4?) driver revisions, including a bugfix only release to a previous branch of the drivers.

Yes, they're part of ffmpeg

[Anonymous Coward]

The three major video players for linux: mplayer, xine and vlc all use the ffmpeg library by default for playing mpeg4 video. Recently, ffmpeg added support for Windows Media 9 (WMV3) as a native codec, so you don't even need the windows binaries for that anymore (although it's probably in "alpha" status).

Re:Yes, they're part of ffmpeg

[Shawn is an Asshole]

The FFMPEG devs have always done an excellent job at bringing Free video support to Linux. Thanks to them most video can be played on Linux without propreitary codecs. There is a downside, though: patents. FFMPEG isn't licensed, so it's not legal for distributions to distribute FFMPEG in countries dumb enough to allow software patents (USA, Japan, others?).

The Fluendo stuff could be a good thing if distros would ship with it. Then video would finally work "out of the box". For those like myself who avoid binary blobs and try to only use things that are truely Free will still have the option of using FFMPEG.

why we are releasing these codecs

[Ur@eus]

I see a lot of people confused about why we are releasing these codecs when there are things like the open source ffmpeg codecs etc.
Our goal is not to provide the community with codecs which there is absolutly no support for already as
that would be foolish. Our goal is to provide a 100% legal option which I know a lot of companies who have or
want to deploy linux desktops have been looking for. These companies like open source, but they also have policies in place
which hinders them from deploying solutions which have clear patent issues hanging over them in their country of operations. This is unfortunatly
the case with most multimedia codecs and even though we have spent a lot on resources on Xiph codecs here at Fluendo and are now working with BBC
on Dirac there is still some way to go before the need for non-free codecs are gone.

So for those in a situation where they can freely use gst-ffmpeg and similar options, more power to you! For those who the lack of licensed codecs
has been a hinderance or problem for adopting Linux (or Solaris) desktops at your company or institution or even private use, then we hope our plugins will be a good solution.

Christian Schaller
Fluendo