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Fluendo To Sell Proprietary Codecs For Linux

Posted by kdawson on from the free-as-in-not dept.

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."

3 of 276 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Hmmmmmmmmn, by John+Betonschaar · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    I guess the vast majority of end-user couldn't care less what their video codec is doing, as long as it plays their damn video's. It's a bit like the NVidea Linux drivers: the free software purists see it as something awful to load a binary driver on Linux, but I for one am very grateful to have proper 3D accelerated drivers at all. Same goes for video playback... There will always be proprietary video codecs, just get over it. I don't see the problem anyway, if I'm want to run commercial software on Linux it is usually binary as well. Does that mean the software is useless or bad?

  2. Good luck with that by Cheesey · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I suppose the market is Linux distributors who can't bundle MPlayer for legal reasons. Can't see anyone buying this directly, though.

    They'd probably be legally unable to be as good as MPlayer, (a universal video player, home page, debs), as licensing some codecs will require signing up to agreements to play nicely with DRM. MPlayer is good because there's none of that nonsense: it just works, for every video that I've tried.

    --
    >north
    You're an immobile computer, remember?
  3. Sounds great. If... by jitterysquid · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Rah rah. I like people trying to sell commercial things on Linux. This will only work if they are johnny-on-the-spot when it comes to updates. I would hate my purchased codecs to keep me from updating gstreamer, the kernel, or whatever. In fact, I should not even have to *think* about my purchased codecs when I run a yum, apt-get, or up2date.

    I'll just wait here for the Free Software fire-breathing demons of zealotry. It's quite cold right now and my furnace needs a break.