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

[Daniel Stone]

On Tue, 2004-11-30 at 11:05 +0100, Philippe Landau wrote:
> 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 ?

I don't know.

> > 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.

This is incorrect and misleading.

If Microsoft puts licence terms on codec DLLs that specify that you do
not get the right to redistribute them or use them as a part of anything
other than WMP, then we cannot do that.

Similarly, I don't need to be a lawyer to tell you that if you modify my
GPL changes and distribute binaries, you'd better well be distributing
source also.

> 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.

Which, you may note, is a reasonably large market.

> >>>>>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.

Encouraging theft is not high on my wishlist.  I don't think it would be
high on the wishlist of government departments considering Linux,
either.

If you want to get music, do what I did on Saturday night, and go to
HMV/Virgin/Select-A-Disc/Mr Bongo's/Obese/whatever, and spend half of
your pay on music.

> >>>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.

I doubt we could provide a script, really.  Saying 'we've automated the
process of illegally using software, contravening its licence, and it's
installed by default' is a tremendously bad idea.