Robin Laing wrote:
Bevan C. Bennett wrote:
Robin Laing wrote:
Even if the website were outside the US, Fedora as a US organization
cannot officially condone the illegal use of software. Private
repositories for these packages are easily discovered for those who
live somewhere without such laws or for those willing to personally
risk infringing use.
Yes, it's perhaps stupid that certain corporations han maintain a
licensing stranglehold on certain popular codecs (even if they did
come up with them in the first place), and prevent them from being
used with GPL software.
The very simple difference is that, because Windows is not
zero-price, Microsoft can absorb all of the licensing costs to these
other companies neccessary to legally include their algorithms in the
packaged product. Apple can (and does) do the same thing.
A company could set themselves up selling properly licensed software
for mp3 and dvd use, but they could not use GPL code to create their
software without some interesting shenanigans, because the license
will prohibit the end result from being GPLd.
The DVD issue is really annoying, but I just rip all my CDs to .ogg
and avoid the MP3 fiasco entirely. For a user without a pre-existing
collection, it's easy to use the included tools in Fedora to do this.
As an added benefit, not having any mp3s on your system makes you
less likely to be targeted as an alleged music pirate by large
overzealous acronyms.
It is a shame that companies are doing all that they can to prevent
the growth of Linux. Look at Microsofts paying SCO to fight. (search
for links) DeCSS was developed for the purpose of playing DVD's on
Linux.
Even if the site cannot be officially sanctioned by Fedora and RedHat,
it doesn't mean that it cannot be setup. If you follow and search the
Archives you can find most of these pachages mentioned. The problem
is one single site. Even when I typed in "yum update" yesterday, I
ended up with a dependency error so yum is not perfect. Some sites
have part of the package but you have to download libs from another
site. Of course a new user needs to set it up for all the "other"
providers. Especially the signatures for security.
Ripping or even playing CD's could become a problem without codecs as
the music industries want to put more copy protections on the CD's. I
have even seen suggestions of using WMP 9 with DRM for protection.
We may have one blessing if the EU forces Microsoft to not include
Windows Media Player. It would be nice if something similiar could
occur in the US and Canada.
I agree, but do we have a working KaZaa like thing on the moment? Or a
5.1 sound system? That is a booster with at least 4 speakers for 29 euro
C-media card and 50 euro Trust speakerset
--
Peace is everywhere
http://gershwin.xs4all.nl
