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Of course its not F/OSS. If you live in a country that enforces software patents you are breaking the law by using F/OSS implementations of most of those FFMPEG supported codecs.

Sometimes I'm pretty much convinced that most F/OSS supporters are more concerned about the F and not the OSS. If you wanna watch video thats encoded in patented codecs then you either break the law or you buy the software.

IANAL, but I'm pretty certain that patents dont apply to end users in most countries.

And yes, most F/OSS supporters should be more concerned about the F part.

"IANAL, but I'm pretty certain that patents dont apply to end users in most countries.

And yes, most F/OSS supporters should be more concerned about the F part."

Well, apparently it is in enough countries. The US definitely, and apparently some countries in the EU since Fluendo is a Spanish company.

Sometimes I'm pretty much convinced that most F/OSS supporters are more concerned about the F and not the OSS.

F as in Freedom, not price...

Is there still meat left on the dead "Free Software means no cost" horse? It has been beaten for over two decades...

I doubt a lot of open source software would be as popular if it wasn't free as in beer. then again one could say the same about closed source web browsers as well

Edited 2007-01-17 05:21

Patented things can be still opensource. This is only limited by source code licence. Fluendo provides MP3 codec with source (xfree licensed - I think), but you don't have right to distribute binary, and if you use this source you need to take care to get patent licence yourself.

Some people uses binary codecs from windows on linux. For them are these codecs better solution.

Actualy in most countries software patents are not valid so this thing doesn't make sense in them.

And to be honest, the whole thing doesn't make sense anywhere. It only proves the point that there are people who will go to great lengths to earn money off other people's work and stupid political leadership.

Actualy in most countries software patents are not valid so this thing doesn't make sense in them.
Actually, unfortunately in many countries software patents are valid, so this thing makes sense in them, doesn't it.
And btw., patents aren't the only issue here anyway.

And to be honest, the whole thing doesn't make sense anywhere.
Because...
Oh wait, you didn't provide any argument why that should be the case.

It only proves the point that there are people who will go to great lengths to earn money off other people's work and stupid political leadership.
Why should that be the case, especially considering that fluendo developed these decoders themselves?

@Jack Malmostoso
The Windows codecs and the mp3 codec (that btw. fluendo payed for) are also available for ppc.

...but some of us, who work in media, are stuck with the choice of using closed codecs, binary drivers,etc - or giving up the use of any FLOSS.

In an ideal world you are of course right, but the thought of having to give up my Linux workstation doesn't appeal much

Whats wrong with the free codecs and the free drivers?

what's wrong with the "free" ones John is they are against the DMCA in the US. Personally I say use them anyway as a form of protest but I'm glad fluendo has come along with legally licensed ones, it's a big step for Linux IMO.

I meant the http://www.xiph.org/ codecs. Do you mean that those are against the DMCA?

Din't Linspire do this ?

I believe so, and the paid-for versions of Suse and Red Hat also include the ability to legally play proprietary codecs in patent-land. I think they all licensed the Linux version of RealPlayer to do this.

The difference in this case is that

a) These plugins are for GStreamer, which means that any and all GStreamer-based apps will be able to use them (so you're not forced to use RealPlayer), and

b) These plugins aren't limited to just one particular distro: any system with a recent version of GStreamer for Linux or Solaris will be able to use them, and

c) They're available to the man on the street for a fixed, one-off cost, rather than being forced into a subscription (Suse and RHEL), or being charged for everything (Linspire)

These plugins are for GStreamer, which means that any and all GStreamer-based apps will be able to use them (so you're not forced to use RealPlayer)

Hmm, I think the Realnetworks codecs are jsut bundled with the real player but work with any player using the Helix engine

They're available to the man on the street

I think this is a major improvement on itself. We all know that there has been a suitably licenced DVD player software for years (LinDVD) but the vendor refuses to sell it to customers and only sells it to distributors and appliance manufactures.

It appears that it depends (at least for now) on the individual Codec.

The Windows media codecs (including the bundle) is available for Linux PPC as well (also for Solaris, Intel and SPARC)

What about other architectures? Hmmm I guess my iBook will need mac-on-linux for a while more...

From the FAQ on Christian Schaller's blog:

"Why is only a subset of the plugins available on Linux PPC and Solaris?

Because we don't have them ported yet. To be honest the popularity of the Windows media plugins on Linux PPC and Solaris will determine if we ever do port them in fact. Unless the plugin available for these platforms sell well enough to validate the cost of porting more codecs there will be no further codecs supported on these platforms. That said we are not going to pass judgement on either platform very quickly. For Linux PPC we will let PS3 be out on the market a while before start making assumptions about the viability of that market and for Solaris we will let Sun ship something else than just development versions of Solaris bundled with GStreamer 0.10."

only downside, due to its complex nature, it drains battery power alot quicker on dap's

Usually the main power consumtion difference comes from the way the two codecs are implemented. The MP3 codec is so common that it is mostly implemented directly in hardware, i.e. DSPs designed closely to its needs, special microcode, etc., while the secondary codec(s) usually require more program code to be executed, sometimes even needing the help of the general purpose CPU of the device (or the respective part of a combination CPU like in a TI OMAP)

Regarding these CODECS; I assume they're both compression and decompression; for example, I could use them to rip music of a cd and compress them using wma, correct?

Nope, it's all "dec" and no "co" at the moment.

From the FAQ on Christian Schaller's blog [1], which really ought to be linked at the top:

"What about encoders?

We will soon start to offer some encoders too. Our windows media audio encoder is already in the beta program and the windows media video encoder is in final stages of development before hitting the beta program. To begin with these will be just separate download or maybe part of an windows media encoding bundle. As more encoders gets created we probably will offer bigger encoding bundles to, similar to the playback ones."

[1] http://blogs.gnome.org/view/uraeus/2007/01/16/0

Edited 2007-01-16 22:47

Cool, thank you for the correction - I just hope that even though there will be that ability to encode/decode in the future, it won't result in manufacturers being lazy and stopping their support for OGG.

What OGG needs is for Novell and Red Hat to team up on promoting royalty free technologies, and better yet, getting this technology on Windows in a seemless way so that the transition from proprietary and patent encombers codecs like WMA and MP3 as pushed to the side.

I guess its the whole compatibility vs. migration argument; its nice to have technology that aids migration, but does the consumer truely benefit if they never actually fully migrate - Wine would be an example of that conumdrum; it helps people run their Windows application, but will it result in vendors being lazy and using the excuse 'it runs in Wine good enough, so why natively port?"