“We can choose to fail. If we don’t support the media formats that contain the content users want to see, we lose the 64-bit desktop. It’s that simple. Doing nothing guarantees that we lose, probably to MacOS X.
Every type of content that is unavailable on Linux hands another content-based killer app to a proprietary platform that does support it. Just as we needed a binary-only Netscape in 1998, we’re going to have to stomach some binary-only crap for now if we hope to be ready in time. If we ignore this issue, the dominant 64-bit platform will be owned by our enemies.”
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#1 by harrytuttle on December 24, 2006 - 8:14 pm
i fail to see what he’s talking about.
apple does NOT want us to play their tunes and video on something other than itunes or an ipod, and they don’t want to release an itunes for linux.
they protect their content with encryption, and they enforce it through the dmca.
i don’t know very well how the new microsoft store works, but it will probably be very similar, their zune is incompatible with the stuff released from the other stores.
we already have open source implementations of nearly every proprietary codec out there used by apple or microsoft (leaveing the patent problem aside), but we can’t use them with the content sold on itms or the microsoft store because they don’t want us to do it.
so what should we do exactly?
#2 by Jakob Petsovits on December 24, 2006 - 8:40 pm
…and really, who is still taking ESR for serious by today?