On Fri, 2007-07-06 at 09:47 -0700, David Boles wrote: > on 7/6/2007 9:20 AM, Les Mikesell wrote: > > David Boles wrote: > >> FYI - All of the codecs are not supplied by Microsoft in Windows either. > >> Only the ones that they license for their bundled software. The Windows > >> Media Player is an example. > >> > >> Others can be added if needed or come with other media software that is > >> *bought and paid for by you*. And they can provide the codecs because they > >> pay a license fee. > > > > The question is, how many times do you have to pay for the right, for > > example, to play a dvd? > > When you buy the DVD player and hook it up to your TV maybe? The > manufacturer has paid a license fee to use the codecs when he built the > DVD player to sell to you. > > Or when you *buy* the software to view the DVD on your computer that works > because the company that *sold* you the software paid a license fee to do > that. > > I do not recall any DVD bragging about you being able to watch it on your > computer when using Linux as your OS? Can you watch it on your computer in > Windows or MAC OSX? Sure. When using Windows, or MAC, software with a paid > license for the codecs. > > And the license that you are referring to belongs with the software that > you can not use. Which they see, as do you apparently, is of your own > choosing to not use. > > This is a round-robin argument. The people that own the codecs are not > going to give them away. The people that provide Fedora to you, and me, > are not going to pay for the license, which I would think would be per DVD > ISO downloaded/sold/given away and for each and every piece of software > that could use it, and then *give* it to you for free. Nor do they want to > on policy and principal. > > In other words? I don't ever see it happening until the codecs are FOSS. > And I seriously doubt that will ever happen. But when you purchase a piece of hardware, there is a reasonable expectation that it will work in the system. If it comes with bundled software, you have purchased the license already, built into the price of the associated driver. All that is missing is the conversion to another OS, and there is no reasonable expectation that the hardware should be OS dependent, nor that an algorithm would not be portable. The only reason it is not is not due to the license fee which you paid, but the vendor not seeing sufficient revenue to support the second OS. But when that OS is supported by a free community and the cost of conversion is free, the cost argument fails, so what is left? Regards, Les H
