ubuntu aims (Re: Idea for expanded support of some non-free software

[Jeff Waugh]

<quote who="Philippe Landau">

> open source is there to change this.  in the transition period, there is
> no way around supporting mainstream proprietary formats.  is it possible
> to have at least one canonical team member work on this full time ?

No, that's not what we're here to do, but we will happily accept packages
into our universe and multiverse repositories as long as they are legally
redistributable.

Also, see the flashplayer-mozilla package for an example of a package that
neatly avoids the redistribution issue.

> >However, we can increase demand for unencumbered formats 
> >such as the Xiph stable - Ogg with Vorbis, Speex, Theora, etc. 
> 
> great, how could canonical contribute to this ?

We're shipping all of these by default, supporting them as default formats,
and feeding patches and bugs back upstream where appropriate. How could you
contribute to this? :-)

> > We can provide opportunities for people to provide legal and licensed
> > software for using encumbered formats like DVD, everything mpeg, mp3,
> > etc.
> 
> excellent. is this possible ?

Of course.

- Jeff

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