[Lancaster] Re: Help -- Video importing/processing software

[Martyn Welch]

On Sunday 13 August 2006 02:08, Richard Robinson wrote:
> The "selling point" of this freespire appears to be the ability to (easily)
> include unexaminable binaries ? I suppose that's nice if you need it, not
> sure I'd want to trust it too far meself. The FUD in the FA puts me off
> somewhat - "A big portion of the world is turned off by Linux, because
> it doesn't legally support things like MP3 <and other formats> out of
> the box". "apt-get install mpg321" worked fine for me. So offputting, eh ?
> They may have more of a case with the other formats they mention (which
> I don't really need too much, so I don't know), but they definitely
> overstate it here. Which, as I say, puts me off.

Interestingly, that's not necessarily legal [1], though it is a slightly 
lighter grey area in Europe than America. Basically, in certain large 
portions of the world, you need a license to use MP3 decoders and/or 
encoders, thanks to software patents.

This is exactly why I encode all my stuff in Ogg Vorbis[2] and why I spent 
extra money getting a portable audio player which would play them[3].

Interestingly, you can now make various portable audio players play Ogg 
Vorbis:

http://www.rockbox.org/

Personally I'll stay clear of Linspire - I think there is better out there. I 
understand their market, those that want to use a computer without having to 
learn anything about it. Not my cup of tea.

Martyn

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3#Licensing_and_patent_issues
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogg_Vorbis
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_Karma
-- 

Martyn Welch (martyn at welchs.me.uk)

PGP Key : http://www.welchs.me.uk/martyn/pgpkey/
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