codec buddy pain

[seth vidal]

On Mon, 2007-11-05 at 13:05 -0500, Luis Villa wrote:

> I'm not sure if these lines are useful to you, Seth, but there are two
> tests for me that make me slightly less uncomfortable with these
> plugins than with other things:
> 
> (1) is it low in the stack? if the non-free bit is low in the stack
> (e.g., X drivers) you're at the mercy of the vendor- all of your
> freedom is at risk if they go away. If the non-free bit is high in the
> stack, you still have the majority of your freedom intact if the
> non-freedom gets screwed up somehow, and you can more easilly work to
> replace it. (Here, the bits are very high in the stack, and very easy
> to replace- we'll have free implementations the very day the patents
> expire. But of course we should resist moving the dep deeper into the
> stack- no system sounds shipped as mp3, for example.)
> 
> (2) does it create non-free data, or merely allow consumption of
> external non-free data? If we allow people to bring their stuff with
> them (or import it from the non-free world) we're clearly helping them
> move towards freedom. If we're helping them create non-free data,
> we're in a different boat- that is a step back. (You might argue that
> it is two steps forward one step back, but it is still different than
> merely helping consume legacy media.)

okay, this confuses me a bit. Is the data non-free? I didn't even think
that an encrypted pdf is non-free. The data could be free, just the
format is not.

If you mean does it help the user create non-free formats then I think
we should ask ourselves what's the point of the mp3 plugin?

I think it's pretty clear - the whole point of the mp3 plugin to help
the user interact with the ipod-based world. That, at least to me, means
both get-content-from and send-content-to that world.

Converting to ogg is not good enough.


> 
> [Tangentially, I feel comfortable saying that mp3 is not
> system-critical, but exactly where in the stack flash is is a very
> interesting question at this point, given how much of the web depends
> on it. And the firefox Fedora ships *tries* to download flash, even if
> it fails.]
> 

How about printer drivers?


> [Also, tangent: Fedora should definitely use 'legacy media' where ever
> possible to describe mp3s and other proprietary formats.]

And then when the patents expire we get to say, what? "No longer legacy
media"?


-sv