On 15/05/10 21:09, Chris Adamson wrote:
Two more responses on this:
On May 14, 1:12 pm, Dick Wall<[email protected]> wrote:
I totally know this - I also have videos on my netbook right now that
use H.264 and they look fabulous. Interestingly I had to rip them from
the DVD copies that I own because the digital copy included in the
package of blu-ray, DVD and digital copy is DRM'd and only works on
windows or mac. If this is the "open" standard that Steve is peddling
to replace flash (which does play nicely on Linux and many other
platforms - not all for sure, but more than Apple's stuff) - I ain't
buying or even downloading for free.
1. Like I asked parenthetically, how would we feel about Flash if they
were neglecting Linux like they did for the first half of the 2000s?
Let's also note that their support for "many other platforms" only
goes so far… Flash doesn't support other F/OSS operating systems like
BSD or Haiku (nor do I suppose we really expect them to), they don't
support Linux on any CPU architecture other than x86, and their
official distro support<http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/
systemreqs/#os> is limited to Red Hat Enterprise 5, openSUSE 11, and
Ubuntu 7 and up.
There is a working version for 64bit Linux:
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/64bit.html
Considering that is a binary distribution model restriction official
support to the main architecture and the three major distributions is
understandable, too.
But I (and most Linux advocates) would probably agree that the binary
Flash program is not a good thing either. The FSF even lists Gnash (an
open source SWF runtime) as number two on their priority list:
http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects/
I think for me the main difference between Adobe's products and the
H.264 story is that Adobe so far has been quite good in letting
alternatives happen. I nowadays find the open source PDF viewers much
superior for the main task of viewing PDFs (as opposed to filling in
forms etc.). They open in a fraction of a second and stay snappy even
for large documents, something that is not true for Acrobat Reader on
any platform I've seen (and yes: I do clean out the plugin directory on
Windows installations).
There is a major difference between just not being active in supporting
something compared to setting up structures that make it hard to achieve
the result for anyone else. From my limited knowledge H.264 seems to
fall strongly into that latter category, it is burdened with patents
that disallow alternative implementations. It also has very aggressive
licensing terms, that affect not only media encoded with H.264 but
anything that has had H.264 somewhere in the production chain. That
seems particularly questionable considering that most video cameras seem
to adopt H.264 as internal encoding nowadays.
To me it seems supporting H.264 means going towards something that will
make the whole GIF debacle look like a walk in the park. I don't think
any technological merit can make up for that. So while I believe the
claims that H.264 is much superior to any other video codec, I will try
to avoid using it until the patent and licensing questions are answered.
And since I am afraid your previous comments about Linux advocates were
more than just a joke: direct price is not a central concern. I pay for
software, I have donated money to software makers and I have donated a
lot of time to OSS. Even if someone could calculate that the TCO of my
Linux setups is much higher than for some other OS, they will have a
hard time getting me to switch. That is mostly due to the fact that I
feel I can get much further on Linux, but partly due to ethical
considerations. If that money I spend on software is used to corner
other markets I feel guilty. At the moment that means for me that even
if I would like Apple products, I would not buy them, no matter what
they cost.
Peter
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