Re: Intellectual Property Plugins and GNOME

[Brian Cameron <Brian Cameron Sun COM>]

Thomas:

I was going to point you towards the archives, but the GNOME archives
seem all messed up - no emails before today.

Here was my original email.  It seems after the responses, that there
is little interest in providing encumbered plugins on GNOME distros.
While not exactly the answer I was hoping for, I appreciate people
exploring the idea and explaining the state of affairs to me.

Personally I suspect this will mean that Sun will take a "wait-and-see"
attitude with the forthcoming WMA/WMV plugins and allow end-users to
purchases the plugins directly from Fluendo if they want them rather
than bundling them and paying the high cost of licensing.  Especially
if that's what the other GNOME distros are planning to do.  Though I
don't really know, and I know the decision hasn't yet been made
yet by the management at Sun.  But I'm sure it will help them make
a decision if they have a feeling for what other distros are doing.

Brian


Brian Cameron wrote:
> As many of you are probably aware, Fluendo is now selling licensed IP 
> plugins for decoding the MP3 audio format and WindowsMedia audio/video
> plugins are currently in beta-test.
>
>    http://shop.fluendo.com/
>
> While I think it is important to support free multimedia codecs
> (ogg-vorbis, FLAC, Speex, Theora, etc.), I think it is also good that
> the desktop has evolved with a free multimedia framework that allows
> IP-encumbered plugins to be easily integrated with the desktop if
> users wish to pay the associated licensing fees.
>
> Here at Sun, we have been talking with Fluendo about licensing these
> plugins.  As you can imagine, it is fairly expensive to acquire a
> license that allows a vendor to freely ship these plugins (as opposed
> to a per-use license).
>
> They are especially expensive when one considers that many users use
> UNIX in non-desktop environments and are likely not interested in the
> plugins or paying for their bundled cost.  Even adding together all
> UNIX-based distributions, it is still a very small segment of the
> desktop market.
>
> In our discussions with Fluendo, we asked them if an organization
> like the GNOME Foundation could acquire a single license that could
> be used for all GNOME users, regardless of distribution.  Christian
> Schaller from Fluendo said that he thought that this should be possible
> if it could be organized.  I am sure the details would need to be worked
> out, but this might be something worth exploring so that GNOME
> distributions can save money and end-users can have a more rich
> experience.  Perhaps several distributions could contribute enough in
> donations to the GNOME Foundation to support Fluendo in this way?
>
> As an aside, I know that Real also offers WMA/WMV plugins that have
> similar licensing fees.  Also, Real obviously supports their own
> RealMedia formats.  So given the choice of paying a similar amount
> of money to use GStreamer with WindowsMedia support or use Real
> with both RealMedia and WindowsMedia support, I think it is likely
> that organizations may well decide to support Real/Helix.
>
> Perhaps Microsoft and Fluendo would find it interesting to work a
> license with the GNOME community directly since WindowsMedia and
> RealMedia are competing formats and otherwise it seems Real may be in
> a good position to become a Linux multimedia standard.  Also, it seems
> it would strengthen Microsoft's commitment to be fairly competitive if
> they were to work out such an arrangement with an organization that
> represents such a small percentage of desktop users.
>
> Is this worth exploring?
>
> Brian