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

[Philippe Landau]

Daniel Stone wrote:
>>>>of these, multimedia is the one lacking most, 
>>>>so it would justify the biggest attention.
>>>Sure, and we're working on it, [...]
>>if, as you wrote, there are around 20 canonical
>>employees working on ubuntu, why can not at least
>>one concentrate on the field admittedly lacking the most ?
> Because, as Matt said -- we're hackers, not lawyers.  The technical
> problems to do with multimedia have already been solved, 
could VLC be moved from "universe" to main ?

> as you can see
> by the fact that you can play these files if you use illegal software.
> The problems left to be solved are all legal; 
there is no way to know exactly what is legal without working with
a lawyer. no international business can operate without
consulting lawyers and i am sure canonical does too.
some of the software for multimedia is only illegal
in the united states.
ubuntu could make a repository for the free world,
for example. you could even call it "freeworld",
and users would need to confirm they are not
in the US or Guantanamo before it is enabled.

> we cannot redistribute the
> solution.  So, if we are to have support for proprietary multimedia
> formats included, we need to investigate how to redistribute them.
> No-one from any distribution has yet come up with any real good ideas.
> And there are certainly not 20 of us full-time on Ubuntu; the number
> would be closer to 10.
is it public knowledge what the other 30 do for canonical ?

>>>>>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 ?
> How do you suggest we increase demand 
> (says the man with 16GB of Vorbis ripped from CD)?
i envy you :-)
ubuntu could install the best p2p apps by default,
including shortcuts to them.

>>>How could you contribute to this? :-)
>>like all users i could convert media to these open formats
>>if ubuntu offered an easy way to do it.
> How?  If we cannot read, say, MP3 for the purpose of playing it, then we
> cannot read MP3 for the purpose of decoding to PCM and then encoding to
> Vorbis.  This is, again, a legal problem.  The technical issues to do
> with transcoding (which is horrific and gives awful quality) have all
> been solved, but the legal ones -- how do I ship an MP3 decoder without
> being smacked down by Fraunhofer/Thomson? -- have not.
as mentioned by others too, ubuntu could provide an install script
for setting up proprietary codecs.