[Sussex] [Fwd: [Gloucs] Is this a first at Microsoft?]

[Geoff Teale]

On Wednesday 09 April 2003 17:32, Matthew Macdonald-Wallace wrote:
> Got this from the LUG @ uni, MS have licensed Win Media tech to
> Intervideo because "Linux is increasingly being used for set top boxes..."
>
> Could have interesting consequences, is this an acknowledgement from
> Redmond that they're not the only ones out there?

This seems to me like an ackowledgement from Intervideo that Windows Media 
Player is a common format on the web and commercial entertainment devices may 
need to support it in the short-term if they are going to sell.  Microsoft 
aren't doing anything benevolent here, they're just taking a cut of the 
profits from part of the market they don't control, in the same way that 
readlmedia and apple do with ram and quicktime formats.  This doesn't mean 
your going to see open source WMP players on Linux anytime soon, nor are Red 
Hat or SuSE likely to license this technology.

-- 
GJT
Free Software Foundation
tealeg at member.fsf.org