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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."

2 of 276 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Hmmmmmmmmn, by timmarhy · · Score: 0, Troll

    he is right. no one except people like RMS give a shit about the license of software, only that it does the job. besides, people can license their work how they like, why should anyone have the right to try brow beat them over it.

    --
    If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
  2. Re:This could help acceptance of the Linux desktop by kosmosik · · Score: 1, Troll

    > Acquiring and installing proprietary codecs is a dark art
    > that is major obstacle to wider acceptance of the Linux desktop.

    This is BS. Installing multimedia support for decent distro is as easy as:
    - enabling an additional repository
    - issuing a command

    You can do this either clicking with your mouse or just with terminal. I'll show with terminal since it is more strict, for Fedora:

    % su -
    (here enter your root password)
    % rpm -ivh http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-6.rpm
    % yum install mplayer-gui vlc xine

    And you basically get players to play most of the content. The content you won't be able to play are extremely DRM infested files like WMV9 (which Macs also won't play) and so on. It is for FC6 but I am pretty sure it works in similar way in any other major distro - just ask their helpfull community.

    Now real question - was it that hard? If you find it hard (you don't need to understand it, just copy and paste the lines) I find you retarded. Sorry. It was not harder than getting Windows to play DVDs or some obscure codecs.

    > As someone who absolutely refuses to pirate software
    > unless I have no choice,

    WTF you are saying? It is possible to play most of media files just fine with OPEN AND LEGAL codecs. It is not like you need to go to PirateBay and download some codecs to make it work in Linux. These codecs have DISTRIBUTION restrictions in some countries (namely USA) but not USAGE restrictions. It is perfectly legal for me to play WMV, MP3 and others using libmad, ffmpeg or smth. similar.

    > I'd be prepared to pay a few ££ extra to stay legal.

    They probalby look for uninformed people like you with such offer. :)