Idea for expanded support of some non-free software

[mrv]

> swf-player from universe. (http://www.schleef.org/swfdec/).

There's also libflash, which is now, after 4 years, again developed at
http://gplflash.sourceforge.net/ . It currently works more crash-free
than before, and hopefully will now pick up new developers to have
better support for the Flash 5+ versions (ActionScript etc). 

It'd be great to see it in main by the release of hoary, with the
option to "replace" it by a non-free Flash package from
multiverse/Macromedia. Though I understand that for the people that
require Flash to "just work" at the very moment would not like this,
and would like to have some nice "this a in-development open-source
plugin, to download the non-free plug-in click here"-notification. I
wonder if something like that could be implemented?

I also hope Ubuntu developers follow projects like
http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/gcjwebplugin/ to have some Java
applet support without non-free software.

And then some thoughts on the wider subject:

The exact reason I'm using Ubuntu is that it's free software. Providing
top-notch software for utilizing Ogg Theora, Ogg Vorbis etc. instead of
mpeg-4, mp3 etc. is of tremendous importance in the future Ubuntu
releases, IMO. Hopefully we can increase the popularity of free formats
so that at some point we could e.g. buy movies in those formats instead
of encrypted DVDs with non-free formats. If all would "go with the
flow", we would have no hope of avoiding tens of licensing costs and
restrictions that would control our media, culture and finally
thoughts.

DVDs are actually the biggest problem, I think. Ogg Theora and Ogg
Vorbis are already viable alternatives to proprietary file formats
(though Theora is not finalized, but its bitstream is what matters
most, and some easy-to-use tools have started appearing). Java and
Flash have open specifications so open-source implementation is
possible, even if it would be preferable for Sun/Macromedia to (L)GPL
their implementations so that all would benefit. DVDs have the problem
of being _illegal_ to play, because of the CSS encryption, in the US
and possibly other countries. My fear is that more things like
encrypted DVDs start to appear (like the digital TV broadcasts in the
US), and that it will spread to the rest of the world. This is the most
important thing to resist.

-mrv

ps. Okay, the last paragraph was simplifying things a bit: there is
actually a problem with everything that can be bought in proprietary
formats - transcoding them to free formats has the problem of having to
be able to play those proprietary formats. However, using Ogg Theora /
Vorbis to encode own videos or music, or one's CD collection (for own
private usage) is quite possible. And on the other hand, in those
countries where acts of playing DVDs and decoding proprietary formats
for interoperation are not illegal , it's probably also legally to rip
a DVD to a free format for own viewing purposes.


-- 
mrv