Re: Intellectual Property Plugins and GNOME

[Sriram Ramkrishna <sri aracnet com>]

On Fri, Jun 16, 2006 at 04:29:54PM -0500, Brian Cameron wrote:
> Personally I suspect this will mean that Sun will take a "wait-and-see"
> attitude with the forthcoming WMA/WMV plugins and allow end-users to
> purchases the plugins directly from Fluendo if they want them rather
> than bundling them and paying the high cost of licensing.  Especially
> if that's what the other GNOME distros are planning to do.  Though I
> don't really know, and I know the decision hasn't yet been made
> yet by the management at Sun.  But I'm sure it will help them make
> a decision if they have a feeling for what other distros are doing.


My advice to you is to sit with the other distributions and
figure out how to do it from a "GNU/Linux platform" perspective.
You can't be the only company who wants to have proprietary format
work "out of the box"

I don't know if there is a "distro summit" but that would be the
first place I would hit to start pushing for this kind of thing.
But doing it from the GNOME project perspective doesn't seem
very likely.  So it's exactly what you're planning to do now,
but it would be the distributions not the GNOME project.  True it
complicates the task, but if distributors want to grow their share
of the desktop market they'll probably want to opt into your idea.

Besides, it's a great way to get some good press by leading. :-)

sri