On Sat, 2004-05-22 at 07:33, Sean Estabrooks wrote: > Sorry Robin, you've completely missed the point. There is a reason > that these things are not provided by a FC2 install. It's because they > are not free. Trying to make a MS Windows clone is doomed to failure. > We can not afford to allow _them_ to set the agenda. What is important > is making our own community that supports truly free protocols > and data formats that we can enjoy. > > As the tyranny of Windows use becomes greater and greater people > will be more willing to join us and use OUR formats. We need to > promote the use of free protocols more than we need to pander to > new converts. as good as that sounds, it's not a very realistic view. People want to share multimedia files. I'm not talking about warez but a lot of regular computer users often like to share fun stuff with other people. This stuff could be sites they find amusing, a song they like, a funny movie clip, etc... And unfortunately, those files usually are mp3, flash, mpeg, etc. I know Red Hat can't support this stuff in Fedora from a legal point of view, but it is hurting linux adoption IMHO. No matter how much better our alternatives are (like Ogg Vorbis for instance), if we can't support what other people are using, a lot of people simply won't care about how much better our alternatives are. I'm talking about regular people. The kind of people who don't even know a site is using Flash, or what MP3 or MPEG is all about... they simply don't care. And if Linux systems don't support these technologies, to them it will seem as if Linux can't do as much as Windows can. We may have the best technology, but you can't expect people to use it if they don't want to use it. Just my 2 cents.
