Re: media files

[David Neary <dneary free fr>]

Hi J.B.,

J.B. Nicholson-Owens wrote:
> You need to slow down and read the post differently.  You have
> substantially misinterpreted what I wrote and apparently provoked
> yourself into being offended when I said nothing offensive.

I wasn't offended. I did think that your tone was a little
confrontational, and I asked you to consider modifying it. In
particular, I resented the comment "it's hard to comment when you
don't even know what you want to do". The truth is that you did
not know what we want to do. If you had said "I do not understand
what you are trying to achive with the LiveCD, would you mind
telling me?" the tone of your mail would have been changed.

This is simple advice on how one gets positive feedback on a list
to which one does not regularly contribute. 

> As 
> I said before, none of the documents pointed to thus far indicate what 
> the goal of the project is.  Therefore it's hard to participate along 
> the lines the poster clearly wanted feedback on.  Without understanding 
> the goals of the project, outsiders can't jump in and comment intelligently.

See, here you are admitting that it is you who does not
understand, because no document describes the goal of the LiveCD
project. This would have been a better thing to say in your last
mail.

> Ogg Vorbis, for instance, was invented because of the 
> restrictions limiting the use of MP3 in free software.

True, Ogg was founded as a project to produce patent unencumbered
high quality audio and video codecs. At the time the project
started, there were patents on various parts of the mp3 codec,
but they were freely available to free software products. This
may well have changed recently, but I didn't know about it.

> But other project managers look at the situation differently, using a 
> different metric altogether.  You, for instance, said that you want to 
> provide an interoperable choice.  This would suggest that you are 
> interested in media formats that aren't as fully supported in free 
> software (like MP3, RealAudio, etc.) as other formats are.

This is a non sequitur. I do believe that an important part of
offerring people a free software option is interoperability. That
said, I personally prefer to use open file formats. Also, mp3
*is* supported in free software - there are GPL and LGPL
implementations of the mp3 codec. I think I am still missing your
point...

> Please do try harder to read things without malice.  Some 
> people are just trying to figure out what is important to your project 
> so they can comment in a way that others in the project have asked for.

I have no malice. Perhaps we should concentrate on the core issue
with your original mail. Could you explain why mp3 is
incompatible with free software, please?

Regards,
Dave.

-- 
        David Neary,
        Lyon, France
   E-Mail: bolsh gimp org
CV: http://dneary.free.fr/CV/