I would think that currently we are forcing the user to use illegal sources for such software. SUSE Linux 10.0 retail would be so much more usable if we would not need to do that and could just play DVD's and mp3's and other formats out of the box. We seem to not have a
Firstly .... this is purely my personal opinion, even though all of the guys in my office here agree! But my being at Novell is certainly not of any influence on this issue and it does not reflect the opinion of Novell in any way .. it is purely in my humble opinion. Andreas Girardet wrote: ... problem
doing that with other commercial software, why not with that one.
Because other software like Adobe don't involve patent issues (because they own them). I'm curious about Helix, though.
I don't want to push this into an endless thread but.. it might be even more complicated. So, you want 100% "legal" MP3 and DVD players for SUSE Linux.
Personally I am going to push this until it hits Jack Messman himself 9worst case) if we do not get a solution that allows us to compete with Windows AND other distro's out there. If we are not doing that than why claim to want to become the most usable distro? And if this thread goes on for days, then only since this is an issue that MUST be resolved otherwise we all will look stupid as a community if we do not at least try to find a solution that serves our users.
Would we want a closed source application ? I don't think so. I'm not a GPL freak but... what we really want is an OpenSource implementation.
???????? the OSS release should certainly stay OSS, but the retail product as you say contains some already and to add that to our release should not make such a difference.
We already have those. The point is just that they don't pay for the right to use others' patents. And even then, it's not really clear whether they are breaking patents and licenses or not. Software patents are mostly a weapon to threaten others anyway (or a cash machine in some cases, e.g. Kodak vs Sun).
But it also involves two things: 1) software patentability differs from one country to another: luckily, Europe is safe from those, at least at the moment (don't mind what the European Patent Office is saying, they're illegal and currently cannot be enforced)
Regardless others do this legally and surely they do it in a manner that makes money and is legally safe.
2) depending on the OpenSource license you're using, patents are being taken into account or not (GPL does not specifiy anything about software patents, although some BSD- like do (e.g. Apache Software License 2))
The SUSE Linux retail price is already considered to be quite high in
there are books etc..., I bought every single release since 5.0, I don't mind, but it's what I hear a lot when talking to people) and adding an extra 40 USD/EUR for
And your point here is? the community (yes, I know, that.. I don't know.. not sure it's
the best option.
If you read the linspire site, then the cost for existing customers (which pay 49 per annum) is 9.95. Since I already spend more than double on my SUSE Pro 9.3 and thinking that we have 2 releases per year that is 4 times as much, would you not expect that cost to be already included?
But yet, what about the online version ? Buying the boxed set has been a barrier for quite a lot of people to use SUSE Linux, whereas other distributions are available for immediate download (e.g. Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora). IMHO, that part of Novell's move to open up SUSE Linux will very likely be the most important in terms of SUSE Linux' acceptance and spread amongst users.
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.
What you are saying is: "well, if they want multimedia support out- of- the- box, they should buy the boxed set" ... ?
If that is what is required to be "legal" than so be it. At least we give someone a legal option and are not like at the moment saying: Stay with Windows, since we do not support your expensive DVD collection or your mp3 collection you have spent ripping from your own legally aquired CD's. Or use another "free" or cheaper distro instead. If that is the choice the "normal" user is confronted with then that "normal" user will not choose us, making us certainly NOT the most usable distro there is.
What's the legal situation in terms of copyright and patents with the current option of providing those "multimedia packs" ?
Or would you want to have Novell pay codec licensing fees to, amongst others... Microsoft (to include WMA codecs), and Novell in turn make the users pay for it ? I'm not sure I'd like to pay Microsoft a few bucks when I buy my SUSE Linux set ;)
That is exactly what I am trying to assess is what ways do we and what ways does Novell have to solve this NOW. And since when does M$ own the mp3 or DVD-css license? Would you rather have a certain large percentage of users not use Linux or SUSE and give M$ thousands of dollars, since we are unable to see beyond our ideological OSS mentality in favour of making a more usable product? I agree that the OSS release should stay OSS, but the retail box, which is after all the one that will attract your normal user is going to have a solution that might not be OSS, since we are already using non OSS software with patents in it. They might be "free", but since we do already charge a hefty premium for our products I would expect this cost to be minimal to say the least or be like the Linspire 9.95 price reasonable for existing customers and maybe a bit more expensive for those who just download the free OSS release. Thanks for reading :D Andreas