Re: [xine-devel] [Rhythmbox-devel] Re: rhythmbox: gstreamer vs xine

[Guenter Bartsch <bartscgr web de>]

hallo miguel,

> i would love to see that problems with patents solved, as well seeing
> gnome/kde/redhat/mandrake/suse/whatever users enjoying high quality
> multimedia experience. i just don't know what would be the point in
> including packages in a cripped form (like not being able to play mp3,
> because like we or not it's a de fact standard).

incomplete packages are indeed very annoying especially as it seems that
some distros sell their distro but refuse to give users support and so
they end up on xine-user asking why xine doesn't play back asf streams
and we have to find out the hard way that their distro decided to
include xine packages with certain plugins removed.

of course there are ways to resolve the patent issue, for example:

a) go into politics and try to make an end to the whole evil software
   patenting that nobody (except patent lawyers) has benefits from 
   anyway

b) play by the rules and license all necessary patents - from what i've
   heard, mpeg isn't that expensive so red hat would have to spend a few
   bucks for each package they sell to the patent holders

c) wait for the patents to expire ;) (...hey, lots of time to stabilize
   1.0!)

cheers,

  guenter