DVD (video) and Fedora

[Martin Sourada]

On Sat, 2009-02-07 at 19:32 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> Martin Sourada wrote:
> 
> > That's not what I meant. They are forcing you to use format they've
> > chosen and it does not matter if it's patent encumbered or not, the idea
> > is that you are restricting choice and forcing your users to use what
> > you think is good for them.
> 
> It does matter whether it is patent encumbered or not. Even if you only 
> one format to pick and what you have is not patent encumbered, everybody 
> is free to use it. Remember that Firefox is a cross platform application 
Yes, that's true. It's less restrictive than patent encumbered codecs
(in countries where such patents apply), but still restrictive.

> and itself a platform and cannot rely on gstreamer being available. 
> Bundling gstreamer with Firefox is worse than bundling liboggplay.
> 
Yes bundling gstreamer with Firefox would be nuts. But bundling
liboggplay isn't a perfectly good thing either. You should rely on what
the host platforms offers (though it's usually easier to do such thing
on *nix platforms...)

> Supporting one codec natively on all the platforms makes it easier for 
> websites to rely on what is available consistently. You can bet Apple 
> which controls WebKit won't be using gstreamer on other platforms which 
> means you cannot rely on any codec support being available natively.
> 
No, they won't be. They're using whatever framework there is on mac and
they'll be using whatever framework is default on windows. It's no
different from video intended from download - you rely on the customer
to install the needed codecs himself.

> a) WebKit is not popular enough to make a difference and support for 
> codecs is very fragmented (no support in Chrome, differs depending on 
> the operating system, browser etc)
> 
The support for codecs is not directly in WebKit, which I think is good.
The design is more robust this way, and does not include reinventing the
wheel. And though WebKit is not as popular now, it's importance in *nix
world will surely grow, also it's already used in embeded devices, where
firefox is still not an option, and I bet Google Chrome will prove to be
a very strong competitor in Windows world. Don't forget the fact that
firefox is years already on the scene, while Google Chrome is still a
beta version...

> b) Linux is not popular enough on desktops to make a difference
> 
And no-one says otherwise.

> It takes a popular cross platform FOSS app like Firefox to even stand a 
> fighting chance.
> 
If you have less to offer than concurrence you have much worse starting
position. We should rather focus our efforts on improving FLOSS
codecs/formats (which is good that there are people actually working on
it; and fighting against software patents) so that it would not be a
step back (in terms of quality/features/compression) to switch from say
h264 to dirac. Matroska, ogg, vorbis and flac are doing pretty well, but
we still don't have a competing video codec(s). Also the support of
patent encumbered but open sourced codecs (like x264) is even better
than for the FLOSS ones on linux - as someone already said, try to play
e.g. mkv with theora in xine...

I fear that the only-ogg format and FLOSS codecs support in firefox will
be rather a chance for other browsers to stand a fighting chance with
firefox than a chance for theora...

> Rahul
> 
Martin

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 197 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://listman.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/attachments/20090207/5523589d/attachment.sig>