Only geeks will use the OSS version if there is no option to play media files legally by buying some sort of player from us or from an officially tested and certified. Only geeks who know how to compile and satisfy dozens of dependencies or are clever enough to find binaries that will run on the particular release.
This is not a problem for the community that is tinkering with SUSE 10 and the openSUSE project. I know I can go off and find my own copies of the win32codecs, and compile and install MPlayer... I can go off and find the source for MP3 support and get it working, but... the end user... the guy who wants to leave Windows in the dust is really struggling with this - even with the situation as it is now (YOU updates and installing/using apt4suse). I spend a LOT of time helping people set this up on their systems. They go off, buy the box set from the local vendor, and install it themselves (a tribute to how easy it is to install SUSE these days) but they stall out when they want to play MP3s or their DVDs. That's when I get the desperate email or phone call... "My husband/wife is all upset because he/she can't play music or videos anymore, what do I do???? I know it works for you, because I've seen it on your computer last week!" There are a lot of people that buy the commercial release of SUSE. Giving them full multimedia support out of the box - with the appropriate licenses of course - will actually make SUSE a stronger product that Windows... or the other Linux distros. The openSUSE community has to remember that they are (in my experience) only a small percentage of the userbase. Of all the people I know who are currently using SUSE either as a primary OS, or at least as a dual boot OS, only 2... yes 2 (other than myself) have the comfort level and knowledge to deal with the lack of multimedia support. The rest... they are learning, but... they are relying on me or the other two people to coach them through setting it up. This is their number one complaint about SUSE Linux... solving this - even if it means a few additional Euros on the box price is well worth it... both to Novell and to the end user. Just my thoughts... C.