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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."
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.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
and settles back for a nice round of productive but gentlemanly discussion over the need for massive deployment of closed source modules in Linux.
"Fluendo to TRY to sell proprietary codecs for Linux."
Look at all the flak NVidia's binary-only drivers take from the GNU-types, and those are FREE.
Aren't there native OSS libs for mpeg4 playback already? Might need a binary for wmv but not for mpeg4.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
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?
NVidia's lamented product is a binary only driver with a binary only kernel component. A codec is application software. The nvidia software runs on the bare metal, interacting with your machine in god knows what ways. The codecs are fairly self-contained. It's not really compariable.
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).
""Fluendo to TRY to sell proprietary codecs for Linux.""
The "your codecs want to be free" crowd will take care of that problem.
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.
Stop encoding media using proprietary codecs!
I think someone should point them to the ffmpeg changelog. Actually it does open lots of proprietary formats and VLC uses the same codebase for his own engine.
If you are from the ESR tribe you will see this as a positive step towards world domination.
r ld-domination-201.html
http://catb.org/~esr/writings/world-domination/wo
ESR, et al, believes the ability to play codecs such as these is so vital to the 2008 world domination deadline, that we should put up with these binary blobs. For a while, at least.
Lindows is supposed to be working on this also.
First of all, look at the Open Sound project. They filled a niche by selling drivers for certain sound cards that had more features compared to the OSS drivers.
Second, I think that it is even easier to sell these kinds of things today. They can make a deal with somebody like Novell or Xandros who want to provide their users with a fully functional fully LEGAL linux desktop. This will help them to do that.
I don't see this being so popular with non-commercial distros like Debian because its a different set of users. But with commercial distros like Xandros (who already offer things like Codeweavers Office), I think its a great fit.
finally porn has been ported to *nix.
I hate DRM as much as the next person, but this is good news. Acquiring and installing proprietary codecs is a dark art that is major obstacle to wider acceptance of the Linux desktop.
Given some further development, I can see a few opportunities:
As someone who absolutely refuses to pirate software unless I have no choice, I'd be prepared to pay a few ££ extra to stay legal.
I haven't scrolled to the bottom yet to see if this is redundant, but FFMPEG has recently added WMV9 and VC1 decoders. http://ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu/ It works fine for all of the Legacy content that I have. They also have MPEG/2/4 and a whole bunch of others. The only codec that I seem to be missing is Indeo 5
BBH
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
I guess a native binary blob is slightly better than a MS coded binary blob
It's significantly better, actually. Not because it's technically superior (although it may be), but because it can legally be rolled into a commercial version of Linux. Right now, you can't legally distribute a Linux distro with multimedia support (at least not in the U.S.), because they depend either on MS DLLs (obvious copyright problems) or patent-encumbered free implementations (which can't be distributed with the distro for legal reasons).
This makes Linux into a second-rate desktop OS, even if you're willing to pay for it, because it means key features don't work out of the box. There have been exceptions to this from time to time (Xandros, Lindows), but they weren't well accepted by the community, possibly because they tried to leverage their use of proprietary codecs as an advantage over other Linux distros, rather than against Windows -- not a good way to make friends.
A company which wasn't involved in the actual production of a distro, might be in a good position (assuming it dealt with everyone on the same terms) to produce codecs that could be incorporated into (a non-free, pay-per-copy) version of any distro. E.g., someone could take Ubuntu, add the codecs (paying Fluendo, obviously), and sell the result as a package, suitable for pre-installation. I don't think this would violate GPL either, if the codecs were built in a way that didn't require linking or otherwise producing a "derived work."
In short, Fluendo could be in a position to be ESR's "Streaming Penguin." In that paper, he discusses some of the major problems facing Linux as a marketable desktop OS, and the lack of modern multimedia capabilities are a real deal-breaker. In fact, the lack of multimedia capabilities are more of a weakness, than simply being free-as-in-beer is a strength; people are obviously willing to pay for an OS that works, but one that doesn't work out of the box (or works only after fiddling around with some shady instructions involving PLF mirrors) won't fly, even if it's free.
While people here on Slashdot may not regard having to manually install LAME, Xvid, Flash, and the Win32 codecs as a significant problem, it's one of the many reasons why you can't go out and buy a Dell pre-configured with Linux as a home computer. Even if there wasn't Microsoft trying to torpedo it before it gets going, I'm not sure customers would accept anything that didn't work right, right out of the box. Fluendo could, if they play their cards right, be a big benefit to the adoption of Linux.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Use Ogg Theora! It's a free and open spec.
---- Politics: Kissing ass and pointing blames.
Speaking for myself, I've been using Linux for a while now and, these days, it is the primary OS I use on my home desktop computer. Windows is still there, but for legacy programs that I still need and I switch off the internet whenever I start Windows (it's WinME).
If you can give me a Linux distribution that is supported and comes bundled with legal implementations of all the codecs at a reasonable price point, I'll buy it. Throw in something like Cedega for games or Crossover Office for other apps (if I even need it at this point) so I can get rid of my Windows installation entirely and that would be an ideal solution for me.
Proprietary, non-free applications are going to be essential to getting Linux into the mainstream. Software sellers aren't interested in an OS they can't sell software to run on.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
If you have read Christian (Fluendo most visible VP) blog post, they plan to provide upgrades via distribution upgrade/installation system (apt-get, yum, etc.)
How would this work? Does APT or YUM work via authenticated HTTP connections? They'd obviously need some way to keep just anyone from sticking "apt http://fluendo.com/updates nonfree" into their sources.list and grabbing their software -- and I don't think their business model is going to fly if they attempt to do shareware.
Maybe they could sell people digital certificates which were used in the authentication process, allowing them to access the repositories; that seems like it might be viable. Not perfect (because you'd need to keep people from sharing the certificates, but at the same time you wouldn't want to tie them to IP addresses, because that would impact traveling people or those on dynamic IPs), but I could at least see it being possible.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
MPEG2 and MPEG4 have LONG been supported by ffmpeg, mplayer, xine, and vlc. As for Windows media, libavcodec in mplayer has supported decoding Windows Media 7 and 8 natively for some time now, and just recently support was added for WMV9 (aka VC-1, the latest Windows Media codec used on HD-DVD and Blu-Ray) using, again, a fully open-source decoder.
Anonymous Luddite: "What do you think of the dehumanizing effects of the Internet?"
Andy Grove: "Not Much."
I deal with libraries in my line of work, and I think Linux and libraries are very compatible ideas. Librarians are also sensitive about respecting copyright, and I think codecs are possibly the biggest item slowing down adoption of Linux by librarians. Bravo!
I wonder if these Codecs could also be made to run under Solaris or BSD or other open source OSes?
Even for the people who use i386, this means there would be a legal codec so the big distos could include it with video players out of the box
% yum install totem-xine You forgot the step of obtaining a patent license.
A.Supported by ffmpeg/libavcodec/whatever else through open source implementations The only way for United States residents to lawfully use open source implementations is to leave the country. B.Supported already through binaries on linux (such as the RealPlayer binary codec libraries) Are the w32codecs lawful to redistribute under copyright and patent law?
You'd think that, wouldn't you? Designing and implementing the software - you're right, in general. But in terms of finding bugs, frequently an outsider does better. It's practically a cliche in programmer circles that the bug you've been fruitlessly hunting for two days will be solved when a coworker looks over your shoulder for five seconds and says, "Oh, hey, there it is."
Many bugs are syntactic, not semantic. And someone who's familiar with the syntax, but not necessarily all the semantics, can spot things that others miss. Put in less technical terms, they see what the code actually does whereas someone who works with it constantly may just see what it's supposed to do.
And other bugs are related not to the problem domain per se but the way it relates to other domains. The Nvidia/Apple bug discussed here recently was due not to any deep graphics issue, but by improperly using memory - probably a signed value where an unsigned is required, so that hitting memory over 2GB does Bad Things. Yeah, I'd believe a relatively untrained programmer might spot that.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Keep in mind that this exact same functionality is _free_ under Windows. No it's not you fool. You pay $200 for a copy of Windows; a significant portion of that goes to licensing codecs. You just don't notice it when you buy a computer with Windows bundled in, so you think it's free. Sure, if you pirate Windows, it's free, and if you use ffmpeg on Linux it's free. This solution is illegal in the US, and entirely useless to OEM vendors.