[Fwd: [Bug 163675] mpeg situation not explained in documentation]

[Karsten Wade]

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 at redhat.com
To: kwade at 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 at 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...

-- 
Karsten Wade, RHCE * Sr. Tech Writer * http://people.redhat.com/kwade/
gpg fingerprint:  2680 DBFD D968 3141 0115    5F1B D992 0E06 AD0E 0C41   
                       Red Hat SELinux Guide
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-4-Manual/selinux-guide/
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