Turbolinux Licenses Windows Media 9 549
spike-288 writes "According a press release, Turbolinux is the first major Linux distributor to license and ship a media player capable of streaming Windows Media audio and video. The new product, "Turbolinux 10 F..." is based on Turbolinux 10 Desktop but will also include licensed versions of Macromedia Flash, legal commercial DVD playback (via Cyberlink's PowerDVD player), RealPlayer 8, commercial Kanji fonts and iPod support via gtkpod (including enhanced functionality)." Update: 04/28 02:33 GMT by T : Prostoalex adds "The Windows Media codecs for Linux will be available for download for $64, the complete TurboLinux OS will cost $150 in Japan and the United States."
Getting rid of DRM? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Getting rid of DRM? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry to play devils advocate there
The main argument sould be that it is not free software, not open source, and not based on a free
Thank you for your time,
BBH
Re:Getting rid of DRM? (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe what the parent poster wanted was to remove DRM from his own media, but not from media that he had himself created. The concept that you only "own" media you've created yourself is ridicilous; If I have bought a DVD in a store, it's mine. I don't own the copyright, but the physical product belongs to me, so if I want to remove DRM from it, that's my business and my right. By any sane definition of the word, that does not infringe copyright. Making copies for my personal use is Fair Use.
Obviously, I don't live in the US. Where I live, when you've bought something, you own it.
Re:Getting rid of DRM? (Score:4, Insightful)
Enjoy it while it lasts..
Re:Getting rid of DRM? (Score:3, Interesting)
It would take some doing, but what would be the ideal solution (in my opinion) is to stop buying stuff from them. Get independent books, independent records etc that have no
Re:Getting rid of DRM? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Getting rid of DRM? (Score:5, Insightful)
What one guy in his house does (and there are many, many people who copy DVDs purely for fair use reasons, starting with all of us who have toddlers in the house
Backing up your Disney DVDs so your kids don't destroy them, then playing the backups while the originals are kept under lock and key, is not infringement.
Re:Getting rid of DRM? (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, that really depends on where you live. Here in the UK, for example, it most certainly is infringement.
No, I don't suppose that anyone would ever get in trouble for it - but that doesn't make it legal, or make the law right.
Re:Getting rid of DRM? (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, the meaning hasn't been changed, merely extended to something that is conceptually the same but which did not exist at the time the word was borrowed into English from French.
In the case of using "piracy" to mean "copyright infringement," on the other hand, that is a complete break with the actual meaning, and was made up by RIAA and MPAA. It is not even an evolution; merely something they repeated and repeated until they got the press and politicians repeating it, but that doesn't make it true. Piracy remains the hijacking and robbery of vessels (and sometimes road vehicles; the meaning has been extended that far) by force of arms. And yes, pirates do exist today, in the places you mentioned, among others. I'm pretty sure they aren't copying DVDs.
Your claim that there are pirated clothes is as false as your claim regarding copyright infringement. Pirated CDs, DVDs, clothes, etc., are genuine articles which are stolen by pirates and subsequently resold (I haven't heard that pirates target that sort of thing much, so these are probably very rare, if not non-existent). A knock-off Rolex, on the other hand, is just what you properly named it as: a case of trademark infringement. If they copied the inside as well (not likely), then it would probably also be a case of patent infringement. None of copyright/trademark/patent infringement are acts of piracy. They are acts of infringement. That is the legal definition, and the only one that even RIAA can use in court. The legal system does not define "piracy" as the infringement of copyright, trademark, or patent. As one who hopes to take the bar exam in the future, I certainly hope it never does so and do not expect it will.
Piracy has not "evolved" to mean any kind of infringement. It is just a word stuck onto it by RIAA et al. That is the complete opposite of evolution, and something that is rejected by many people other than myself.
Re:Getting rid of DRM? (Score:5, Insightful)
Quite disgusting in my opinion to compare someone infringing on copyright with a pirate who rapes, pillages and murders people on the high seas.
Most actual acts of piracy at sea are completely savage affairs with the victims lucky to escape alive.
Obviously this is about the same level as some kid copying a CD instead of paying $4 for it.
Wrong. (Score:3, Interesting)
Pirates of Penzance - Gilbert & Sullivan 1879
Sorry...evidence this time? (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyway, I mentioned Gilbert and Sullivan because I heard a program about them on Radio 4 one time, and they mentioned that the people guilty of copyright infringement were pirates. Sorry the links and quote failed to mention that, I was in a rush.
Here [geocities.com] is a link about the etymology and various definitions of piracy, freebooting etc. from 1250 to 1988. Quote from the 1988 etymological dictionary [geocities.com]: The term pirate/piracy HAS evolved over time, you are wrong, though I wish I'd taken more time to support my argument with evidence earlier.
So...it was about 200 years before Gilbert & Sullivan that it was first used that way...pretty cool.
I think that this association is as bad as the next guy, but I don't think the RIAA invented it
Re:Getting rid of DRM? (Score:3, Insightful)
Linux is here! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Linux is here! (Score:3, Funny)
Real Player? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Real Player? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Real Player? (Score:4, Interesting)
Under FreeBSD4.9 it constant crashes, can not play half the video formats, and it very choppy. I get signal 6 and signal 11 errors galore and core dumps.
In WIndows I just point and click. Yes, Unix is behind in some things and not ahead in everything.
First it was the gui, now its media.
Re:Real Player? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Real Player? (Score:3, Interesting)
Conservative moderators? (Score:2, Funny)
Let me know if you ever see one. All the moderators I ever encounter are knee-jerk liberals.
Re:Real Player? (Score:4, Insightful)
Sounds like your joking, but you are right in my view. I run two desktop systems, a Linux and a Windows PC. They are different OSs for different things.
Re:Real Player? vs. Helix Player (Score:3, Insightful)
This isn't actually a bad thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This isn't actually a bad thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
And you consider that a "good" thing?
I (and I think many of us) consider Linux as embodying freedom (in both the RMS and and the beer senses) in the IT world. Now, I certainly won't put down some of the great work the major distro companies have done for us, but this goes a little too far - The difference between "added value" to "basically un-free (in both senses).
Using this, as a foot in the door, the more open standards can be intorduced and promoted to gain larger foothold.
I hope you meant that as sarcastic.
Using this as a precedent, companies can feel safer about making totally closed standards, with the hope that if they become popular enough, even "those Linux nuts" will eventually license it from them.
Not good. I can see this from three main angles... First, while nice to have a legal way to do most of the things mentioned in the FP, I would point out that a legal way to do that already existed - Use Windows. Second, illegal (in some countries) ways to do all of those already existed, making this very unlikely to see adoption by any but the most picky of people and companies. And third, I do consider it nice to have native (rather than the hack MPlayer and the like use) support for a given format, but not at the expense of making Linux have the same stability as Windows.
Re:This isn't actually a bad thing... (Score:5, Informative)
I (and I think many of us) consider Linux as embodying freedom (in both the RMS and and the beer senses) in the IT world.
It depends on what you're putting before the slash in */Linux. Your view corresponds to "GNU" before the slash, just like the Debian contract. However, some Linux-based operating systems such as Lycoris and Linspire have different goals that they use the same kernel to meet.
And third, I do consider it nice to have native (rather than the hack MPlayer and the like use) support for a given format, but not at the expense of making Linux have the same stability as Windows.
Remember that thanks to Linux's memory protection and I/O abstraction, nothing affects system reliability unless it goes through the kernel, and as long as you haven't tainted your kernel with a "GPL\0which stands for Greedy Private License" driver, a few proprietary apps shouldn't break the increased reliability that the free software process brings to the rest of your system. Or what evidence can you provide against my assertion?
Re:This isn't actually a bad thing... (Score:5, Interesting)
No, no, you have a fair point that I hadn't considered. I agree with you completely - No kernel mods, this should at worst crash the player in question, not the whole system.
I do, though, have to wonder if (at least) WMP9 support requires a (binary-only, of course) kernel module to enforce its DRM... If so, my earlier comment on stability would still apply. If not, will this allow playback of protected content, or have they glossed over that small omission from full compatibility?
Re:This isn't actually a bad thing... (Score:4, Informative)
- An LD_PRELOAD library that captures accesses to
/dev/dsp or another sound device - A modified kernel sound module that saves the audio data
- Setting the recording source to the sound output
- Emulate the entire system and capture sound output (such as with UML, Bochs, Mac-On-Linux, etc)
Basically, it is impossible to enforce DRM unless every component all the way down to hardware is under the media providers' control. Which means it is impossible to enforce DRM in Free Software.Nope (Score:3, Informative)
These two could be done on Windows as well
No. A "modified kernel sound module" wouldn't get logo'd and signed by Microsoft WHQL, and "emulat[ing] the entire system" could be detected, as extant emulators have their telltale signatures, which is why Secure Audio Path doesn't work on VMware.
Re:This isn't actually a bad thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
First off, who says bringing Windows Media Player to Linux will make Linux unstable? It MIGHT make for an unstable Media Player but then, a single application should never make an entire OS unstable, right?
Right? Well I assume that MUST be the case, since everybody gripes about how single errant applications can bring down Windows.
If it does turn out that bringing WMP to Linux makes Linux as a whole unstable, then maybe Linux doesn't have that superior stability that everyone has always claimed.
Truth be known I don't even use WMP on my Windows machines. I stick to MP3 if I can help it. Sure, it's not opened like Ogg, but it's not quite as evil as WMP and it's a whole lot more popular.
I really don't see the need for WMP on any platform, much less Linux, but if someone wants to pay for a codec, let 'em.
Re:This isn't actually a bad thing... (Score:3, Insightful)
What if someone came along a wrote a beautiful proprietary home video package that runs on linux and costs $25. You would say bad thing, and I would buy it. Freedom is having that choice.
Re:This isn't actually a bad thing... (Score:5, Insightful)
It will take actually selling it in quantity to show that there is a real place for Linux in the propriatary software market.
Red Hat/Mandrake, SuSE/et al have already shown there's a place for it in the commercial market.
Commercial != Propriatary
KFG
More significantly (Score:3, Interesting)
One thing that bugs me is the phrase "PowerDVD for Linux enables legal playback of DVD movies" - implying that it's illegal to use DeCSS based solutions to do so. Not in my Asian Pacific country it's not. Still, it's on th
Re:More significantly (Score:3, Informative)
Or worse yet, implying that DeCSS is the only way to play DVD's in Linux. I don't even think it's the preferred method. libdvdcss [videolan.org] works quite nicely, and doesn't rely on a warez'd CSS key to do the job.
$149 per copy (Score:5, Funny)
More than..... (Score:4, Informative)
Not True... (Score:3, Informative)
You only have to buy hardware which is almost anything. Here [newegg.com] you can buy an OEM Windows license. This [newegg.com] qualifies as hardware. You don't have to buy a computer to get an OEM version of Windows.
Re:$149 per copy (Score:2)
Re:$149 per copy (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:$149 per copy (Score:5, Insightful)
Incorrect. The price of Windows is included with the computer. More accurately, you're claiming that the price of Windows comes bundled in with the cost of the computer, and you have to go out of your way to avoid paying for a copy of Windows with every new PC. This is what you may hear being referred to as the "Microsoft Tax".
While not impossible, this is highly unlikely. According to Pricewatch [pricewatch.com], XP Pro Academic Upgrade is currently running $68 ($80 for the boxed version).
More likely is that your university has joined Microsoft's Campus Software Programs (either willingly or because it was coerced by Microsoft; more details if you want). Essentially, the students all pay $30-$70 per semester and, in return, they can go to their local bookstore, show proof of ID, and get an upgrade version of Windows XP (read your license carefully!), and one copy of MS Office. Other software may also be included (at my uni, Publisher and Visual Studio are also included). You then go down to the bookstore and plunk down more money for software you probably don't need anyway on top of the per-semester payments!
Pretty sweet deal if you ask me. Well, for Microsoft anyway--universities shell out even more money for software they likey don't need (as you pointed out, Windows is gonna be installed anyway), and the school will find it even harder to switch away from Microsoft (since that'd require recalling (and auditing the recall of!) every piece of software given out under the programme).
What's worse is hearing people, being fleeced $150-$350 over 5 years,--not counting summer school-- for software they don't need anyway, and hearing them say it's such a great deal because they get Windows XP Pro for $7!
Re:$149 per copy (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been buying MS products at my university for years. They have all been full, working, non-upgrade versions. I probably am paying for them out of my tuition...but I have no choice in that. They're also spending $12 million on a "student wellness center" this year...i don't get to take my share of that and spend it on a gym membership instead, do i?
For a college student on a budget, those cheap MS offers can be a godsend. Linux works great for me, but I'm a programmer. Its far superior for virtu
Re:How much is the free download? (Score:5, Interesting)
If you are really interested, I suggest you read the GPL [gnu.org]. To speed things up, Sections 2 and 3 answer your question (note, 2b "no charge for the license" doesn't preclude charging for the download, the CD, or whatever method of giving the person the software you care to do, it's the license that is Free, not the media).
That, and as a prior poster indicated, the Media Player stuff isn't GPL'ed by a long shot.
Expensive (Score:5, Insightful)
Eric
Re: (Score:2)
What about VideoLAN or MPlayer? (Score:5, Informative)
-H
Re:What about VideoLAN or MPlayer? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What about VideoLAN or MPlayer? (Score:3, Informative)
Evil genius? (Score:2, Interesting)
I wonder if this is some evil Genius way to Screw MS & give the linux community WMA & Legit DVD's.
IIRC the terms of the deal are that Turbo pay MS and the other companies for each copy that they SELL ?
While sticking to the GPL they still give the stuff away for free!
Next step mounting those "lasers" on the sharks.
I got a different message from this press release (Score:5, Informative)
Perhaps I misread, but this article seems to be saying that they used xine to play WMF, and makes no reference whatsoever to licensing WM 9.
However, they do appear to have an agreement with Cyberlink.
As for being "the first major Linux distributor to license and ship a media player capable of streaming Windows Media audio and video", well, I've been doing this for quite some time now, thanks to apt-get install mplayer
Re:I got a different message from this press relea (Score:2)
Re:I got a different message from this press relea (Score:3, Insightful)
I can do the same thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I can do the same thing (Score:2)
Re:I can do the same thing (Score:5, Interesting)
With this, I can do all Quicktime trailers, Windows Media streams, you name it. Heck, you get the RealPlayer codecs and you can do that too.
Re:I can do the same thing (Score:5, Informative)
Most of the codec packages are given to you "if you own a legal copy of windows."
So yea, it works, but if a major distribution started making big bucks and came with these dll's on the CD, it might see the courtroom..
Re:I can do the same thing (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll bet this geek can puke the ins and outs of the GPL and such ad-nauseum but when it comes to a Windows license, suddenly it's a "grey area" that "you're not technically supposed to [use] without a license".
Oh, that's right, I'm reading slashdot again.
(as always, mod- because [amoung other things] I'm not a raving open-source-everything-free-as-in-beer
Re:I can do the same thing (Score:5, Funny)
Well, yeah, but it's gonna sound like shit.
Wait a sec... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Wait a sec... (Score:5, Informative)
Oracle runs on linux, and it's not free.
So they have a media player, that's licensing windows media player code, so it can play windows media.
and it's not free.
what doesn't compute?
Re:Wait a sec... (Score:5, Insightful)
As the other poster pointed out, just because something runs on Linux (or is Linux), does not mean it's free. You are helping to propagate the myth that everything about Linux is free, if that were the case, I highly doubt as many big name companies would do ANY development work in porting their apps to Linux, just to give them away for free.
Finally... (Score:5, Interesting)
Really, the time of DVD on desktop computers for anything other than loading software and (if it's a burner) burning DVDs is gone, gone, gone. Long live the cheapo "hacked by Chinese" DVD player.
Re:Finally... (Score:2)
Riiight. (Score:2)
Those days are gone for you, maybe. Others are not so priveleged.
Re:Finally... (Score:4, Interesting)
Really, the time of DVD on desktop computers for anything other than loading software and (if it's a burner) burning DVDs is gone, gone, gone. Long live the cheapo "hacked by Chinese" DVD player.
What are you smoking? For the price you're talking, sure you could buy two hacked by Chinese DVD players, and all those two devices can do is play dvds and take up space. A computer can do a whole helluva lot more, and is well worth the extra money it costs to get it going. Not to mention that you can get a computer that can play dvds for that same price nowadays and a Free OS to boot! So, should I spend $X on a machine that I only use once a week, or should I spend $X on a machine that I'll use everyday and still does what that other box does that I'll use once a week?
It's a no-brainer. There's a reason everything's getting l'il computers in it and Linux is getting embedded all over the place (TiVo, anyone?). The flexibility is well worth it, and the reduction in R&D brings the products to market both faster and cheaper.
And in Other News (Score:5, Funny)
Apparently, Satan, otherwise known as the Prince of Darkness or the Fallen Angel, has taken up residence in nearby sunny Barbados. When questioned about his recent arrival into this mortal plane, he claims to have come to the tropical islands for his retirement. "You see, my home kept freezing over, so I figured why not enter the lucrative ice-cube business." Profits from Hell-on-Ice exceed 10bn quarterly, and after the OpenIPO, HOI stock has split three times and nearly doubled in value.
St. Peter, the Father, Son, Holy Ghost, Virgin Mary and Rabbi Lottstein were unavailable for comment.
Another server bites the dust ... (Score:2)
Great but we want open stuff to play with! (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft changing its tune to avoid EU antitrust (Score:2)
The Price of DMCA Compliance (Score:4, Insightful)
""Turbolinux 10 F..." will be available for purchase in Japan on May 28, 2004 and is priced at $149 per copy. Customers upgrading from the previous version of Turbolinux Desktop can purchase 10F for $64. Customers outside Japan can purchase "Turbolinux 10 F..." starting June 30, 2004."
-----------
So, for $149, one gets:
* Legal DVD Playback
So... the extra price in this case is to maintain legality with a piece of legislation (the DMCA), which, in the context of libdvdcss, does not make a significant appeal to the common sense politicians are so well known to lack. For an extra price, you can comply with the DMCA. Linux already has everything you need to play DVDs, except this one piece of legality, which is bound to cost more than all the rest combined.
* Legal WMA Playback
First of all, who uses WMA anyway? We all know ogg is THE format for audio, and if not that, mp3. As for video, there are far better (cheaper) routes to go.
* Realplayer
Hmm... realplayer for linux is a free (not libre) download...
Flash support
Oh yeah, this is worth a piece of the price all right.....
Unless they got the code from Macromedia and fixed all the problems, this is worth nothing.
And for this little insertion of proprietary code, I suppose redistribution is going to be illegal, despite the 99.9% prevalence of (superior) GPL'd code this distro is sure to have.
This makes our TCO look _really_ bad.....
Don't get me wrong here, I don't have anything against selling Linux, or support for Linux, for money. But this kind of thing is something that should be marketed as an add-on for any linux distro, not as part of a distro that will be rendered illegal for distribution due to this proprietary code.
Re:The Price of DMCA Compliance (Score:4, Informative)
Whine whine whine, piss and moan. Look, if you really want to get paid, go open up a charity or something. Here in the US, and in many parts of the world, we have a free market, and you're gonna have to compete on it against our free code. Got a problem with it? Go to cuba, I hear they're still communist, and they'll gladly pay you to keep working.
Free Software is not communist in any way, but neither is it capitalist. It is Free of any economic system and is focused completely on the rights of the end-user. You want to steal my rights from me? Fascist. You can have my rights when you pry them from my cold, dead fingers.
You programmers who don't have rich parents and don't want to live in your parent's basement that need to get paid for your work must know that something like 90% of all development is in-house stuff that never sees the light of day. Probably less than 1% of all development is actually products that reach market, and most of those are games!
Quit whining, fucker. If Free Software causes software to no longer be sold as product, it's effect on the marketplace will be minimal at worst, completely unnoticeable at best.
PowerPC? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:PowerPC? (Score:5, Informative)
The problem is that the company always had a "healthy" sense of competition between the US and Japanese offices. Since the PPC effort was done from the US office, they didn't do a whole lot with it in Japan.
When TurboLinux ran out of money, they sent all the US employees home and sold off the Japanese office. So the side here that actually did PPC stuff was dismantled.
Ethics of TurboLinux (Score:5, Informative)
I don't plan on supporting SCO in any way until the litigation is over.
Re:Ethics of TurboLinux (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Ethics of TurboLinux (Score:5, Informative)
No member of UnitedLinux owned another. They put out one release, and once the litigation started, everything stalled. United is effectively no more--they still technically exist, but all operations are dead [com.com].
One thing interesting is that UnitedLinux had one member for each major geographic area except Africa. North America had SCO/Caldera, South America had Connectiva, Europe had SuSE, and Japan had TurboLinux.
Anyone find it ironic? (Score:5, Insightful)
The real tragedy (Score:5, Insightful)
The real tragedy is that Slashdot could post a story that uses the phrase:
and not leave everybody scratching their head saying, "Huh?"
Playback. Just playing the frikkin' things, even if you own them completely on the up-and-up, is of questionable legality unless you do it in an Officially Sanctioned Manner. How stupid is that?
Our society has lost so much perspective it's very scary.
-Rob
Not trying to troll here... (Score:3, Insightful)
Can't this already be done? (Score:4, Interesting)
I've never come across a movie that mplayer wasn't able to play.
Big Deal (Score:2, Redundant)
Running a Free operating system for free: priceless.
First DRMed player on Linux? (Score:2)
If so, this would open the door to some of the RIAA-approved music download sites to Linux users for the first time...
What's with the ellipsis? (Score:2)
Interesting (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, some distros, such as SuSe may have tried this to a limited extent before but the only thing you got from the boxed set was a proprietary installer, not exactly thrilling. I would love to pay for a Linux distro that included useful applications that weren't just carbon copies of existing apps, only open source. Yeah, it might not be fasionable to use proprietary apps but dammit, I want something that is compatible with closed standards that FOSS hasn't been able to reverse engineer yet, if that means paying for it then so be it.
I for one think this is a great idea, after all, the whole concept of Linux is that you can have it any way you want.
Why? (Score:3, Interesting)
How this fits into Microsoft's scheme (Score:5, Insightful)
This is Microsoft's main ploy - it locks aunt Millie into using Microsoft operating systems basically forever.
Now, Microsoft has set a precedent for licensing its formats to Linux distributions.
The real problem is that it is evil to use Microsoft formats, regardless of the operating system.
Contrary to previous posts, this is NOT a good thing.
Ummm, well (Score:5, Interesting)
That's something a lot of people forget about beloved projects like LAME and Xvid. The projects themselves are probably legal, protected as academic works since they are source only. That does not mean you may legally use them. The formats they encode are open standards, but ones that are licensed. What's more, MPEG-4 has a content use fee, you have to pay $0.04 per 2 hours of content.
Now for audio, the solution is simple at this point: Vorbis. It is available for use free of charge. However their video codec isn't yet complete. Well all the other formats are either proprietary, or open but licensed. Even MP3 decoders need a license. All those free MP3 decoder projects that haven't paid it ($60,000 one time fee I believe) are technically illegal to use.
In practise the MPEG group and companies like Microsoft have more or less ignored people that use their standards without a license when not for profit, however that doesn't make it legal.
So until there is a free video standard, you either need to choose a quite old standard (MPEG-1 might be free of licenseing but I am not sure), pay a license fee, or you'll be infringing. That is true if you use MPEG-4 or WM-9. Main difference is WM-9 is cheaper.
Now before you shoot back about MS locking people in, read my post again carefully. WM-9 is no longer proprietary. They submitted it to SMPTE as an open standard. What this means is that anyone can implement WM-9 for a standard licensing fee (called a reasonable and non-discriminitory license, or RAND license). It also means they can't make any future changes to break compatibility since any change has to be submitted to SMPTE and if accepted will be made available to all who licensed the format.
This is the exact same way that MPEG-4 works.
Headline is a lie (Score:3, Informative)
All they say is that it is capable of playing Windows Media files, by using its own "Turbo Media Player" which works with xine.
My guess is that "Turbo Media Player" is nothing more than a front-end for xine (ala Totem), with xine doing all the work.
It's already possible to play Windows Media files in Linux... this is nothing new at all.
The thing about Cyberlink ProDVD is kind of interesting, but definitely not on the same newsworthiness scale as a Linux distro licensing MS technology would be.
Shame on you Slashdot editors... shame shame shame !
Re:Headline is a lie (Score:4, Informative)
I wonder what the source of "codecs downloadable for $64" is??? The press release states:
Customers upgrading from the previous version of Turbolinux Desktop can purchase 10F for $64.
Hmmmmmm.
Re:Headline is a lie (Score:5, Informative)
Unreasonable pricing (Score:3, Insightful)
64 dollars for the codecs?! That's two third of a Windows XP Home OEM license!
And what I don't understand is why I would have to pay for these codecs, if the WMP9 codecs are offered on Microsoft's web site at the same time, for free!
But of couse, that's Microsoft's trick. Increase the Linux TCO for end users by charging ridiculous amounts of money for increasingly important components for Linux, while bundling them with Windows XP with no extra charge.
Please, People! In spite of their horrible adware-ridden previous software versions, RealNetworks has redeemed itself considerably, lately. Both with their RealPlayer 10 for Windows and as well as with their partly open-source Helix framework for Linux. Their codecs are pretty good and they've been the only one of the big three streaming media players (WMP, Real, Quicktime) that have consistently taken Linux seriously over the years, by supporting it as an official platform.
Don't let Microsoft obtain yet another desktop monopoly!
When given the option on media streaming websites, I always select Real- or Quicktime-format.
I currently have the WMP9 codecs installed on my Gentoo system, but I have them only in case I encounter a website with streaming media content that provides its content exclusively in WMP-format. Unfortunately, I've been encountering more and more of those lately. We need to turn back the tide, if we still can.
Re:Unreasonable pricing (Score:5, Informative)
Nope, guess again (Score:5, Informative)
Real and Quicktime aren't any better. Quicktime now uses MPEG-4, which is also an open standard with RAND licensing. It is, however, more expensive than WM-9. Real is still proprietary and thus up to Real networks as to what is available to who and for how much.
So no, MS is not gouging Linux. If the company that chooses to implement it gouges you, that's their bussiness and you should take it up with them. The license is standard, and the terms are known to the world, just like MPEG-2 or MPEG-4.
No problems (Score:5, Insightful)
Why so much for a DVD player? (Score:3, Insightful)
64 dollar question (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It still sucks (Score:2)
Re:Power DVD (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you actually mean 'within the law?' In that case, you're home free too! As you can see on the EFF website [eff.org], the decryption code lawsuits have been dropped! DeCSS is safe, legal, and free!
Furthermore, Jon Johansen was acquitted [slashdot.org] on all charges.
Download DeCSS! Use it! Feel free, in every sense of the word! This was a rare victory for the good guys.
Re:Power DVD (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What makes cyberlink's DVD player legal...... (Score:3, Interesting)
The real problem with DVD software is, when you buy a DVD drive, you generally get a free[gratis] copy of a DVD player. In my case it was Cyberlink PowerDVD. So Mac users obviously aren't the only ones getting the free stuff.
Now, this is all well and good, but if you're a Linux user like me, you can't use the copy of PowerDVD you got given. So you have a legally-obtained OS, a legally-obtained DVD drive, a legally-obtained piece of DVD software, and a legally-obtained DVD, but you still need to use libd
Re:Uh oh, so much for freedom... (Score:3, Insightful)
"Why not use Windows?" Well, perhaps 'cos Linux has a tendency to let you actually do more behind the scen