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Canonical Explains Decision to License H.264 For Ubuntu

Posted by timothy on from the less-painful-to-pay dept.

tux writes with this snippet from The Register: "Ubuntu's commercial sponsor Canonical has tried to clarify how — if not why — it has licensed a closed-source and patented codec for video on PCs running its Linux. Canonical is the first Linux shop to have agreed to license the codec in question, H.264, from MPEG LA. Even though Red Hat and Novell are also available for use on PCs, they have not licensed H.264."

5 of 372 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Good thing by poetmatt · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    so you psoted that anonymously to avoid serious downmodding? Whats a hoot.

    Honestly, H264 is a horrible idea. They're signing up now when this thing isn't even GPL compatible. Do you have any diea what that means?

    oh, right, you don't. Way to troll.

  2. Re:Good thing by timmarhy · · Score: 0, Flamebait
    "The only thing that's "clear" is that h.264 has hardly won anything yet"

    number of devices out there that support h.264 - millions and millions.

    number of devices produced that support vp8 - none.

    I declare h.264 the winner.

    --
    If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
  3. Re:H.264 IS OPEN SOURCE!!!! by dangitman · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    And Europe is the entirely of "the rest of the world"? I think other countries are rumored to exist than the European ones. And I wouldn't be surprised to see the EU countries adopt software patents.

    --
    ... and then they built the supercollider.
  4. Re:Good thing by GPLHost-Thomas · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    Amen. So because the vast majority don't care about freedom and patents, we should do their way? Doesn't make sense, sorry, I'm not buying into this. What you seem to miss is that, considering the amount of computers running Ubuntu, this could have influenced the full of Internet just a tiny bit. Now, this opportunity is over, thanks to the greediness of Ubuntu people.

  5. Re:Good thing by dunng808 · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Canonical is not made up of GPL purists, nor are they made up of OSS purists. They've never, ever claimed to be, and I don't think they should be. They are made up of a group that is trying to make Linux a viable, useful alternative ...

    And they accomplish this by starting with one of the purest open-source distros around -- Debian -- and then pissing all over it.

    --

    Gary Dunn
    Open Slate Project