Kaffeine 1.0 and Kubuntu

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

	Hello,

Le mercredi 21 juillet 2010 22:27:20 Scott Kitterman, vous avez écrit :
> > I believe this is an error, but didn't find the time to overwork the
> > debian/copyright files and request their promotion. They are all GPL
> > licensed packages that should be perfectly acceptable license-wise for
> > kubuntu.
> > 
> > That was btw the main reason I've asked for your concerns. I understand
> > that there are actually none.
> > 
> > > Beyond that, even if the non-free depends could be dropped there is
> > > also:
> > > 
> > > libavcodec cannot be shipped on CDs (c.f. Ubuntu technical board
> > > resolution 2007-01-02)
> > 
> > I suspected that, but this has nothing to do with software licenses.
> > 
> > AFAIUI, vlc loads libavcodec.so at runtime via
> > /usr/lib/vlc/plugins/codec/libavcodec_plugin.so,

...and /usr/lib/vlc/plugins/demux/libavformat_plugin.so too due to 
libavformat's dependency on libavcodec.

> > similar to xine which
> > kubuntu currently uses. The major difference is that for xine, the
> > 'avcodec' plugin is in the package 'libxine1-ffmpeg', which is
> > blacklisted on the CDs as well. I'm pretty sure that something similar
> > could be arranged for vlc as well. We haven't done that yet because
> > there is (was) no technical necessity for this.
> > 
> > All in all, this all sounds like a realistically solvable problem to me.

Depending on the reason(s) why Ubuntu won't put avcodec and avformat to gold, 
someone should check whether other codec libraries are acceptable, notably 
libmpeg2, liba52 and libdca. If not, some more VLC plugins will need to be 
relocated, and some more plugins will be OK but useless. This will reduce the 
set of currently non-main dependencies.

Also, dvdread and dvdnav are not terribly useful as there are not too many 
cleartext DVDs out there.

> So I guess the next question would be do we want it?  We're going to have a
> Kubuntu meeting soon (Riddell is supposed to schedule it) and media player
> selection will be an item on the list.

This will render the player mostly useless, playing mostly Theora and Dirac 
(not even WebM - it uses avcodec). I don't know how this compares to the 
feature set of the current stripped xine-lib. But I am a bit afraid that this 
will give a terrible first impression to many users, especially those knowing 
VLC as the solution to Windows codecs hell.

If it were me, I would have the user install a proper codec-rich player (Xine, 
VLC, mplayer or whatever you like) from the online repositories in the most 
obvious and seamless manner instead. But it's your call anyway.

-- 
Rémi Denis-Courmont
http://www.remlab.net/
http://fi.linkedin.com/in/remidenis