On Thu, Aug 25, 2005 at 10:31 am, in message
, gdk@redhat.com wrote:
On Wed, 24 Aug 2005, Andreas Girardet wrote:
I don't really see that, since SLES based products like OES contain commercial software (like edirectory and so on), which requires a license to be paid. As I said. I would not have any issue in paying a license for such a central feature like proper media support. I think that whatever it is there needs to be a way to match what Windows is offering. If rules are there to stop us to be competitive then the rule is wrong. If laws prohibit us to be competitive then we need to find a way to comply to the law either by paying a fee to the copyright holders or by other means. This needs to be sorted ........
This is where OpenSUSE will need to make a choice, right up front, just like Fedora has.
The choice Fedora has made: we will not ship software that is encumbered by patents. Why? Because we believe that software patents are dangerous and wrong. And we consequently run into issues of "contributory infringement" and "don't tell users where to get an MP3 player" and all of that stuff -- just like you're running into right now.
I am fully behind that strategy for SUSE-oss, but I guess I wonder, why SLES or even the SUSE boxed set (not OSS release), should not contain such a player. We are not like fedora, BTW. I believe this project is very different as we are actually helping to produce the actual commercial release and are not just a testbed with no code relations to the commercial product like Fedora. Hence we should at least think about ways to solve this issue if not in the -oss releases, but in the boxed set or SLES releases.
Red Hat will ship these features with Red Hat products because Red Hat has no choice -- paying customers expect everything to work out of the box. But the Fedora philosophy is different.
Every time a user is unable to play an MP3 file, it's an opportunity to educate. Ogg Vorbis is technically on- par, all of the tools and codecs are completely free, and yet the world uses MP3.
Imagine a user clicking on an MP3 file, and a mock- player that comes up and plays a pre- loaded OGG explaining why MP3s suck. And if you decide to pay for the use of the MP3 codec, pay for the ability to ship a tool
We are not like fedora. We are the precursor of the Enterprise/boxed set products and as such we should think about these issues. And even if they have been discussed before many times, this needs to be solved and discussed again to find a solution that suits our users. After all the reason I do this is to have more and more and more users use SUSE Linux and not something like W*. that
converts MP3s to OGGs.
It's a hard choice. On the one hand: users. On the other hand: freedom. And it's a choice we make in our world all the time.
If you want to be commercially competitive and if RedHat does it already (and other distro's) then we must do it too. There is no choice. The user always comes first. And competing with other distro's certainly right after that. After all our official goals are to be more user oriented than other distro's are. Again Fedora model is not openSUSE model. It is quite different. We actually get to say what is the actual commercial release, but Fedora is codewise not really related to EL.
Choose carefully, and good luck as you move forward. I'm excited to be following along. :)
I am very excited too, even though I probably rather not just follow along, but prefer to be more active. I thoroughly believe that the openSUSE project is an amazing fresh wind in the distro world and will produce amazing SUSE Linux releases, which in time will leave other distro's far behind and really compete with W*, when it comes to innovation, commercial integration and stability. Can't wait for 10.1 where we are actually going to be able to ask and integrate features. And once we have build servers, well I can tell you I am very excited to be following along there ;) ....... and compile my heart out ;) .... Go SUSE go ... but we still need to discuss and solve this issue! Regards, Andreas openSUSE is SUPER: To help in the SUSE Performance Enhanced Release project visit http://www.opensuse.org/index.php/SUPER