codec buddy pain

[Josh Boyer]

On Mon, 05 Nov 2007 15:20:21 -0500
seth vidal <skvidal at fedoraproject.org> wrote:

> 
> On Mon, 2007-11-05 at 13:37 -0600, Josh Boyer wrote:
> > On Mon, 05 Nov 2007 14:21:11 -0500
> > Christopher Blizzard <blizzard at 0xdeadbeef.com> wrote:
> > 
> > > seth vidal wrote:
> > > > On Mon, 2007-11-05 at 14:04 -0500, Christopher Blizzard wrote:
> > > >> seth vidal wrote:
> > > >>> If that's the case then we should just give up on this quixotic goal of
> > > >>> having a pure-free-software distro and start talking to companies for
> > > >>> how they'd like us to provide their closed-source packages and how to
> > > >>> tie a webstore frontend into yum.
> > > >> yumgate!  woo!
> > > >>
> > > >> In all seriousness I don't think that there are a lot of instances where 
> > > >> we would be willing to do something like what we've done in this case. 
> > > >> I'm happy with inconsistency, as long we're transparent about it.
> > > >>
> > > >> In this case it's just because there's no other legal way to do it.  We 
> > > >> can't even ship the free versions because of patent concerns.
> > > >>
> > > > 
> > > > This is what I'm looking for here. I'd like to be able to say something
> > > > that kinda-sorta makes sense for reasons to say no to money from some
> > > > vendor to put an ad for their software in the distro.
> > > 
> > > Hmm.  Trying to firm up the message here.
> > > 
> > > For me this was all about consuming content.  The basic problem we're 
> > > trying to solve for end users is that there's a lot of content on the 
> > > web that requires access to patent-encumbered code.  In order to keep 
> > > Fedora relevant for the real world, we felt that we needed to make an 
> > > exception for end users to legally obtain codecs to view encumbered content.
> > 
> > Wait... what prevented users from legally obtaining codecs from fluendo
> > before?  Nothing from what I remember...
> > 
> 
> nothing, it was just not trivial nor contextual to trying to use those
> formats.
> 
> That's what codeina has done - but it's brought something else into
> relief. We have this software in the distro now that a big portion of is
> providing a window for advertisements for closed-source codecs from
> another company.
> 
> That's the precedent that concerns me.

Yes, exactly.  Chris' statement earlier seemed to imply we did
something in F8 to make it technically possible to get legal codecs,
where that really isn't the case.  It was just made easier.

josh