[Sussex] Distros

[Chris Jones]

Hi

On Tue, 5 April, 2005 14:32, Geoffrey J. Teale said:
> http://www.turbocashuk.com/

Good. It's not very cross platform though.

> Which you can get as a plug in and I have used to get professional
> quality print work done for Emma Tindley couture in East Grinstead.

The plugin is a hack and an almost-unmaintained one at that.

> Well I'm no expert, but I read an article in MIT Technology review
> that said that off line editing firms  had used GPL'd software to edit
> their films on proprietary hardware.  Certainly Roland and a few other

GPLd software that only runs on proprietary hardware.... not exactly of
much use to anyone but an editing shop. It's nice to see people chosing
that over anything else, but ultimately it's still quite locked in ;)

> http://www.arboretum.com/

OS X only.
 > http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2005/02/22/open_source_realtime_video_editing.htm

That looks a lot more like it, thanks, I will check that out asap
(although the released code seems to lag some of the features they are
touting, from what I can see. Still, definitely one to watch)

> .. probably not all there is, but simple google search for GPL and
> video editing return them all.

I go through the ones in debian and on freshmeat every now and then and
they've always been rubbish, with kino and avidemux as the nearest to
decent programs (and kino is DV only, which is a bit useless).

> but specialist applications
> not the definitive switching point that most companies need.

This is true and the significantly smaller markets for such niche software
mean they will probably be more receptive to requests/demands for porting
;)

> Which is the key to getting the more esoteric things done.

I also agree with that, I think we're just differing a little on how much
of the esoteric work is yet done :)

> Hmm, I've not heard this.  Certainly free software is what we want.

I could be imagining it and I can't really be bothered to google for it
right now, so feel free to discount it ;)

> implementation.  Why do you think there's anything political about the
> FSF's views on Linux?

The whole GNU/Linux thing, mostly.

As to why I think FSF will release GNU, including Hurd, as a whole distro:

http://www.gnu.org/gnu/linux-and-gnu.html (by RMS)

"We're now starting to prepare the actual release of the GNU system, with
the GNU Hurd."

Cheers,
-- 
Chris Jones
  cmsj at tenshu.net
   www.tenshu.net