[Slightly OT] Re: Ranter or evangelist?

[gilpel at altern.org]

Rahul Sundaram wrote:

> On 07/27/2009 04:34 AM, gilpel at altern.org wrote:
>
>> They use git, which is not really a bugzilla, but bugs do get fixed
>> before
>> release.
>
> Git is a source code management system and not a bug tracker. You are
> confusing things.
>
>> You are absolutely right. THE problem is the SRC using the WMV format
>> and
>> Microsoft servers with all their shenanigans.
>
> I didn't say using wmv was the problem

If you don't, well, I do. Using proprietary formats on state television is
ABSOLUTELY inacceptable.

> although if they had included it
> in a open format - Ogg, Firefox 3.5 in Fedora 11 would have played it
> out of the box.
>
> Totem plays wmv files just fine. You need the gstreamer plugins -
> gstreamer-plugins-ugly and gstreamer-ffmpeg included in RPM Fusion but
> not Fedora due to software patents.

As I said:

"OTOH, people who come from the windows world don't care about this: they
want to watch the state television, no matter what. And MPlayer does it!

(...)

It seems contradictory but, if you want people to get aware of what
proprietary formats really mean, you first have to provide them means of
reading them... and joining the Linux crowd."

So, MPlayer must be included instead of Totem. From what I read
everywhere, MPlayer does better. If the devil is behind MPlayer, the code
is open, Totem can "borrow" it.

Now, I see even Alan Cox is following this discussion... at least when you
intervene :) I'm sure you and him have better things to do.

I believe I made very clear that we can't always blame Microsoft for
having a 1% market share. There also is need for amelioration on our side.

That's going to be it for me on this matter.