I'm punting this over to the marketing side. The consensus on #fedora- docs is this:
a) Fedora has not done a very good job of loudly advertising why we don't distribute certain codecs, although we do spend a lot of time addressing the topic in other ways.
b) The complaint about multimedia is in every poorly researched review.
c) This is the latest stick to beat Fedora with.
d) An official rebuttal/comment on the situation might help.
Any ideas on this?
I appreciate Greg's approach of pushing the situation back on other people. Our only failing is probably in not being loud and present enough with our comments/rebuttals. Maybe the desktop background by default should be an explanation of "why no MP3 support".
I don't mind including something useful in the release notes, and in fact had intended to with an update. This bug report approaches making a few good points, buried as it is in so much bile.
I'll likely ignore updating this bug except to CLOSE it when the time comes. I've used up the ounce of civility I brewed for this situation on this wannabe-customer.
-------- Forwarded Message -------- From: bugzilla@redhat.com To: kwade@redhat.com Subject: [Bug 163675] mpeg situation not explained in documentation Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2005 14:33:48 -0400 Please do not reply directly to this email. All additional comments should be made in the comments box of this bug report.
Summary: mpeg situation not explained in documentation
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=163675
------- Additional Comments From redhat@chaos.demon.nl 2005-07-21 14:33 EST ------- What a cop out.
First of all: just because your customers aren't paying you doesn't mean you can treat them however you like.
Secondly: it would have been no trouble at all to include one tiny paragraph in the release notes explaining all this. You make it sound like it would have cost a team of writers months to do this.
Thirdly: this is not some obscure little "non-free, closed-source, illegal and patent-infringing" piece of software. Missing MPEg audio playback functionality is a sizable drawback for many people. Even Windows plays back MP3 files by default. So do almost all other Linux distributions. It is something people rightly expect, and at the very least it should be explained to them (by the creators of the product, not by having them perform Google queries) that it is missing, and why.
Lastly: don't blame me for this for not filing a bug about it during the test process. As if nobody could have figured this out otherwise. And as if the situation hasn't been the same for many previous versions.
What un unworthy response... Pity...
Is this suggestions to be done straight away as in announcing it or are we planning on making it big enough to hit people over the head with in FC5?
The only thing I can suggest is adding it to the front page of Firefox when you start it up after the install. It can say it there. Or maybe when you find links to download the .iso's. Put a what fedora does and doesn't do section. What type of os it is regarding the fact that its imo semi-bleeding edge.
On Fri, 2005-07-22 at 08:46 +0800, Marc Wiriadisastra wrote:
Is this suggestions to be done straight away as in announcing it or are we planning on making it big enough to hit people over the head with in FC5?
Both?
The only thing I can suggest is adding it to the front page of Firefox when you start it up after the install. It can say it there. Or maybe when you find links to download the .iso's. Put a what fedora does and doesn't do section. What type of os it is regarding the fact that its imo semi-bleeding edge.
Then that would be a "Note" that appears at the top of the release notes. I agree with the concept of what you suggest, it certainly makes it fairly obvious. However, I don't know about the idea of making the first, biggest, and most regular information that readers see be a message about MP3 patents.
We reorganized the release notes to be more friendly for a default Firefox page. Not all the changes are in FC4, but the basic idea was to add a "what's new" section and make the table of contents more visible to show what information is in the release notes. The "what's new" contains links to useful information, and would be a natural place to put such a note.
- Karsten
On Thu, 2005-07-21 at 21:40 -0700, Karsten Wade wrote:
We reorganized the release notes to be more friendly for a default Firefox page. Not all the changes are in FC4, but the basic idea was to add a "what's new" section and make the table of contents more visible to show what information is in the release notes. The "what's new" contains links to useful information, and would be a natural place to put such a note.
I probably would have done this straight away, it was hard to feel motivated with such a bug report in front of me. ;-)
http://fedora.redhat.com/docs/release-notes/fc4/errata/index.html#sn-why-no-...
(link should be live within the hour)
If anyone out there who is not @redhat.com has an opinion to share on this bug report, I wouldn't mind if the user was better made to understand the meaning of community. In all its lovely senses. :)
- Karsten
On Fri, 2005-07-22 at 02:12 -0700, Karsten Wade wrote:
On Thu, 2005-07-21 at 21:40 -0700, Karsten Wade wrote:
We reorganized the release notes to be more friendly for a default Firefox page. Not all the changes are in FC4, but the basic idea was to add a "what's new" section and make the table of contents more visible to show what information is in the release notes. The "what's new" contains links to useful information, and would be a natural place to put such a note.
I probably would have done this straight away, it was hard to feel motivated with such a bug report in front of me. ;-)
http://fedora.redhat.com/docs/release-notes/fc4/errata/index.html#sn-why-no-...
(link should be live within the hour)
If anyone out there who is not @redhat.com has an opinion to share on this bug report, I wouldn't mind if the user was better made to understand the meaning of community. In all its lovely senses. :)
I'm happy to pitch in here; I didn't post to the bug report because I felt I couldn't have been as generous as you were. :-) Now that I have a hold on my temper, would you like a comment in the bug or just here in the forum?
Karsten Wade wrote:
I'm punting this over to the marketing side. The consensus on #fedora- docs is this:
a) Fedora has not done a very good job of loudly advertising why we don't distribute certain codecs, although we do spend a lot of time addressing the topic in other ways.
b) The complaint about multimedia is in every poorly researched review.
c) This is the latest stick to beat Fedora with.
d) An official rebuttal/comment on the situation might help.
Any ideas on this?
I believe the best thing to do is what the original poster suggested in Bugzilla: "It would also be good (although I realise that this is the wrong place for that) if stubs were installed for the missing components which explain the situation. This has been done for xmms, but I think that's the only place. The other affected programs just display very generic and uninformative error messages, or they are just mysteriously missing."
I expect if such a stub is made as a gstreamer plugin, the majority of multimedia apps in Fedora will be covered.
If the situation is clarified at the application level then I find enough for release notes to mention it in a secondary, non-prominent place.
BTW, as this is a marketing list, when we will have and advertise some mind-blowing multimedia applications based on free codecs to fill this void?
On 7/21/05, Karsten Wade kwade@redhat.com wrote:
a) Fedora has not done a very good job of loudly advertising why we don't distribute certain codecs, although we do spend a lot of time addressing the topic in other ways.
Scapegoat sez, "Patent royalties are the pressure sensitive landmines of software development. Field mice don't have to worry about it. But a herd of sheep do."
Getting the message out about the dangers of patent royalties succinctly in a way that encourages people to get informed about the larger issues where foss and patents intersect is a pretty tough nut. Any explanation inevitably has to touch on the project's commitment to make sure 3rd parties can use and re-distribute all the provided software without getting additional permission from individual patent holders. I don't know how you say that in a way that make a compelling read... I fell asleep while trying to write this paragraph and again when reading over it for mistakes.
-jef
Am Donnerstag, den 21.07.2005, 13:28 -0700 schrieb Karsten Wade:
Any ideas ?
What clearly should take place is heavy collaboration, promotion and contribution to:
* OGG/Theora Vorbis xiph.org * ...
Yes, OGG is better than MP3. Yes, Fedora is supporting OGG over MP3. But right now I don't see very much of emphasizing the freedom the user gets. From some point of view Fedora is MORE free than Debian.
Fedora should always include the newest Vorbis tools, that are available in order to bring their users the newest (and exciting!) technology.
So if Fedora would come in a box one should put this newest support things on it.
I have just learned about Apples iLive (http://www.apple.com/ilife/ ) thing. Why not promote something similar but Fedora provides it for no cost!? (i know we are not there right now, but somehwere we have to start)
marketing@lists.fedoraproject.org